• Chronicle Xammar y Rodríguez, bronze in 470: the medal that Dentistry missed

  • The road to the medal A tragedy in Indonesia, Japanese discipline ...

  • Jordi Xammar The Olympian who rescued a young man who "had four hours to live"

He had bludgeoned the boat once, twice, three, four and even five times just as he crossed the finish line.

He had turned him around in the water to get on the hull and shout at the other Spanish sailors, who were applauding him from the dike.

He had thrown himself on the ground when he reached the dock.

He had cried like a child.

He had hugged the whole team, he had sung "Champions, champions" with them, he had briefly called his girlfriend

Carmen

, he had asked for water, a lot of water and he had even talked to televisions and radios.

After winning bronze in 470 at the Tokyo Games,

Jordi Xammar

had done many things when he reached the mixed zone and, despite this, he was still shaking.

His nervous hands confirmed that behind the joy for the podium there was something else.

"Yes, it is that what I have experienced this week ... The pressure I have suffered has been amazing. I would go to sleep, I would open my eyes and my head would start

'you, you, you, you, you, you

', to turn everything around. We are not sports stars, we are normal people who have worked all our lives to be in the Games and, of course, winning a medal is something very important. There is a huge leap between being a medalist or not being a medalist. I already debuted at the Rio Games, I thought I was prepared for this, but ... What if the medal slipped away? ", admitted Xammar, who woke up this Wednesday in Enoshima with a nervous wreck.

"I love to compete"

Before the decisive race, the

medal race

, which scores double, admitted that it had spent a quarter of an hour brushing its teeth, thinking about what might happen a little later, and demanded a moment of silence to meditate and concentrate. He, a hyperactive guy like few others, the protagonist of a thousand adventures, capable of going to Indonesia to help after a tsunami or to rescue a lost hiker in the Sierra Nevada, was suddenly paralyzed. "Now I understand my parents," he commented and developed.

"My parents came from the world of competition, motorcycling, and they didn't want me to compete. They wanted me to play sports, learn values, but not compete because they knew these feelings, they knew that this is very hard. But I love it. I have wanted to compete since I was very young and I have wanted this medal. I remember that, when I was 11 years old, after the 2004 Athens Games,

Natalia Vía-Dufresne came

to my club, the Garraf Yacht Club, to teach us about silver medal and I thought: 'I want that' ", recalled Xammar, son of

Pedro Xammar

, who raced in 250cc and was a partner of

Sito Pons

. At his side, his partner

Nicolás Rodríguez

, was much calmer, his usual attitude, the usual contrast.

Since they both met competing in Optimist for Spain, they hit it off because of that: one was the storm, the other, the calm.

When, after the Rio 2016 Games, Xammar called Rodríguez to join him in 470, he did not hesitate because he knew chemistry.

"I did nothing, five years ago, I had abandoned sailing and was embarking to Holland to work there as a dentist, my profession. When he called me I thought it was my last chance to re-engage in sport. Being here seems like a dream, a dream I had already given up for lost ", acknowledged Rodríguez, who was already calculating the seafood dishes that will come," many "," and the barnacles, and the beers, and a rice with lobster with my mother. "

"As soon as I return, I invite you," he said with a smile similar to Xammar's.

Just one point

Like him, he started sailing as a child, in his case at the Náutico de Vigo, and like him he came from a sports family, but in his case more related to the sea. His grandfather was a commander of the Navy, his mother sailed and his father was a great fan of sport fishing. Before the Rio 2016 Games - to which Xammar attended with a teammate from his club,

Joan Herp

- Rodríguez went to Las Palmas to try to qualify with a Canarian skipper,

Nahuel Rodríguez

, but there was no way. So he left him, finished his degree in Dentistry and arranged a move to the Netherlands - where his girlfriend is from - that would never arrive. Xammar's call changed everything.

"It was all very tense. There was a moment in which I thought: 'I don't know, I don't know,'" Rodríguez accepted about the

medal race,

which for a moment resembled the disasters experienced by the 49er classes on Tuesday. They started third, with five points over two duos, New Zealanders

Paul Snow-Hansen

and

Dan Willcox

and British

Luke Patience

and

Chris Grube

, and in the last leg of the regatta, one of them took the lead.

Snow-Hansen and Willcox were only one point behind Xammar and Rodríguez, just one square away from snatching the podium from them, and each maneuver was more tense than the last, each wave was higher than the last.

In the end, the Spaniards crossed the finish line in fifth place, which they needed, and they were finally able to breathe a sigh of relief.

"I feel relief, I feel happiness, I feel ... I don't know what I feel, I don't even know what I'm saying," Xammar acknowledged, still shaking.

The competition is very tough, even if you win the medal that will change your life: his parents already told him so.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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