• Interview Alejandro Blanco: "Not going to Tokyo would have been the ruin for the sport"

Ona Carbonell

, captain of the Spanish artistic swimming team, regretted that the demanding restrictions imposed in Japan in the face of the Tokyo Games prevent her from traveling with her son.

"I wanted to express my disappointment and disappointment because finally I will have to travel without him," said the Barcelona woman, who hopes that this will serve to "make visible and normalize" the situation for the future.

The double Olympic medalist, 31, assures that the "first question" she asked at the beginning of last August after becoming a mother was if she could travel to Tokyo accompanied by her son

Kai

, despite the problems with the pandemic due to the issue of "lactation", to which he gives great importance.

"They told me no and other athletes hung up on this difficult situation of choosing between breastfeeding and conciliation and some Games, which cannot be compatible. I spoke with the COE, the CSD and the IOC and made a request to the IOC to see if I could take it away. They told me that it was possible, but that the conditions were not set by them but by the Government of Japan, "he said.

"A risk for the team"

However, he finally had to make a "very hard decision" not to be able to travel with his family because they were going to live in "incompatible conditions" so that both Kai's father,

Pablo

, and the boy were "as good as possible."

"Pablo and Kai had to be in a hotel that we did not know how far away and they could not leave the room and for me to go to breastfeed, I had to get out of the 'bubble' and go to his hotel. That was a risk for him. team and it was not the right thing for them (Pablo and Kai), "he added.

"Make visible and normalize"

For this reason, Carbonell feels "very bad" having to make a decision and also hopes that other athletes who "go through the same thing" join to give "visibility to this situation and normalize it". "I'm going to have a very bad time, I'm going to have to spend 'twenty-odd' days with the 'breast pump' and I hope that when it arrives I can continue breastfeeding and that it latches onto the breast, because it is something that matters a lot to me," he said. .

Carbonell, who plays its third Games, will lead a team completed by

Berta Ferreras

,

Meritxell Mas

,

Alisa Ozhogina

,

Paula Ramírez

,

Sara Saldaña

,

Iris Tio

,

Blanca Toledano

and

Abril Conesa

.

Last May, the Spanish team won the silver medal at the Budapest European Championship in the free routine, only surpassed by Ukraine.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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