The nailed "thorn" of the marcher Álvaro Martín with gold around his neck

• Chronicle Álvaro Martín and Diego García Carrera do it again: gold and bronze in the 20-kilometre walk

With the gold in the European Championship still in his smile and his parents celebrating a few meters away,

arrived at the mixed zone in the center of Munich and recalled that he carries a disappointment deep inside and that he needs more success and more time to heal it.

"It's good to win the European, but this summer I'm left with the thorn of the World Cup. It wasn't a failure but I expected more than a seventh place", he commented next to the finish line, still with the Spanish flag on his back, happy, but not so much.

It may be the only way to success.

The self-demand taken to the limit: not even at parties can one be euphoric.

Martín had focused the entire season on getting on the podium of the last World Cup in the 20 kilometer walk and his performance in Eugene will follow him until next year at the World Cup in Budapest, perhaps even until the 2024 Paris Games. Since four years ago gold was hung in the 2018 European Championship, he had been accumulating small defeats and repeating victory this Saturday, keeping his continental title, was only a consolation.

Not even that.

His fainting at the 2019 Doha World Cup was due to the heat and at the Tokyo Olympics, where he finished fourth, three rivals were faster.

But what happened at the recent World Cup in Eugene made no sense to him.

"In the last kilometers, he couldn't, he couldn't, they left me and I couldn't respond", he commented then.

Yesterday in his celebration he remembered that impotence, a reason for his and his team's analysis.

"I want to emphasize that here I did not find myself like in those last kilometers in the World Cup. It has been different," he pointed out, still sulky.

"The competition is like that"

"High competition is like that. When you fail you have a hard time forgetting and Álvaro was very excited about the World Cup", added his coach,

, who now hopes that "seven weeks off" will allow Martín to ponder his summer: a gold in a European is to be exultant.

Both, coach and pupil, admitted that the race had been faster than expected -he made a personal best- and that they suffered a lot in the last kilometers.

"He was going to give me something," Carrillo said.

Halfway through the race, the Swede

broke the group and Martín answered with an attack that left him alone with the other Spaniard,

, who would finally take the bronze behind Karlström.

Martín's movement was dizzying, like a champion, but such a pace led him to receive two cards and a third would have knocked him off the podium.

In the last kilometers he had to contain himself to maintain his advantage and, at the same time, not be reprimanded.

He got it.

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