• Donovan Bailey The 100-meter bombshell in Atlanta'96

  • Coe vs Ovett The class struggle over Moscow tartan

  • Alberto Juantorena When he dared to double his distance and ended up astonishing the planet

  • Emil Zatopek The carpenter's son who came to triumph at the Games with a hernia

  • Rica Reinish The prodigious 'undine' and her complaint against the RDA anabolics

The second gold medal for Spain at the

Barcelona '92

Games

came, on July 28,

in the 200 backstroke, from the hand of someone born in the United States. From a stylized boy weighing 1.88 and 73 kilos named

Martín López-Zubero,

who spoke Spanish with an American accent and whose Christian name was pronounced there, prosodically and orthographically stripping it of the accent: Martin.

Martín López-Zubero Purcell, born in Jacksonville (Florida) on April 23, 1969, a History student at the University of Gainsville, was the son of an Aragonese ophthalmologist who emigrated to the USA in 1955 and who, in his youth, had played basketball at the CN Helios Zaragoza (CN de Club Natación).

His brother David

, from the fifth of 59, had at home an Olympic bronze medal in the 100 butterfly in Moscow'80. And her

sister Julia

, vintage '61, also an Olympian in Russia, had won

the 100-meter freestyle in the Spanish Championship

in 1978, ahead of

Natalia Mas

. In this way, both, with the same time (59.5), became the first Spanish women to swim the hectometer below the minute.

Straddling two worlds, none of the three brothers had renounced, despite their birth, education and residence, Spanish nationality. Martín claimed it more frequently. With the assiduity of someone who was forced, by his predominant position in the aquatic ladder, to reinforce it with words as much or more than with deeds.

And so he endorsed it ad nauseam before the surprised, curious or malicious international press after the gold in those 200 backs, in which he enjoyed unanimous favoritism.

He was the world record holder (and champion) of the event (1: 56.57).

Also the European champion.

From the outset, he established a chronometric difference between himself and his rivals that was wide enough to be considered a guarantee.

And that margin of safety ultimately gave him victory.

Canned, Martín passed in fifth position for the 100 and 150 meters.

Underwater swimming

But while he moved almost without consuming fuel, the others did it pulling reserves.

Also benefiting from his ability to swim underwater, he emerged in the lead in the last lap and stopped the clock at 1: 58.47.

Although an Olympic record, little for him.

Too much for the rest, even for Russian (Unified Team)

Vladimir Selkov

(1: 58.87) and Italian

Stefano Battistelli

(1: 59.40).

López-Zubero's triumph was among the most important in the history of sports in our country.

It was the first time that a Spanish swimmer obtained a gold medal in, in addition, one of the three most important sports, along with athletics and gymnastics, of the Games.

Still thinking about it refers to the unfailing freshness of unique deeds.

Martín-Martin was the product of the genetic and environmental conjunction of two planets.

A synthesis.

Even a synergy.

In his own way, and although at the end of the 20th century, he was also a pioneer.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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