"In excitement, I decided to add and paid": Sotomayor - about the injury on Nikolskaya, conversations with the bar and the world record

A trip to Moscow turned into an unpleasant work injury for the Olympic champion of Barcelona: speaking in a demonstration race on Nikolskaya Street on the first day of the Athletics Week, the legendary Cuban seriously tore the muscle of the back of his thigh, thoughtlessly accelerating at the very beginning of the sprint by 60 meters. But he courageously endured to the finish line, refusing to leave the race.

But the "distance" of the guest visit to the capital continued the next day in Luzhniki, where Sotomayor arrived as a spectator, greatly decorating the high jumper tournament with his presence. Still, it is not every day that you have to compete in the presence of a person who has held the world record in this discipline for 30 years.

Our ten-minute conversation began in a joking manner with a question about the events in the center of the capital.

- Javier, at the age of 55 you should be aware that any competition becomes dangerous. Even as small as your demonstration race on the first day of the tournament.

"That's what I thought. That I'll just go out for a run without straining. Not at full strength, without risking anything. But he did not take into account that competitions are competitions. At some point, in excitement, I decided to add a little to catch up with the leader, and immediately paid for it. If I had known that this would happen, I would have warmed up better before the race.

- Outwardly, you look like a person who is in great shape.

- I make some effort to do this. Two or three times a week I go to the gym, run a little, do gymnastics.

– Your career in athletics is considered to be one of the most successful. But it did not start smoothly at all - by skipping the Olympics in Los Angeles due to a boycott by Cuba. Do you remember your feelings?

- If it were only one Olympics! But there were two in a row. I had to skip the next one - in Seoul.

- Now it is remembered as a grandiose loss, or just an ordinary fact of biography?

- I will not talk about the first of the missed Olympics, after all, I was only 16 years old then, and I did not perceive what was happening as a great loss at all. But before Seoul, it was not easy to come to terms with the fact that these Games would not be in my life either. I was ready to win 100, 200 percent. A few days before the Olympic high jump tournament, I took 243 cm in Salamanca, set a world record, so it was wildly disappointing to understand that the main events of the year take place elsewhere and without me.

— Was it difficult to survive this and stay in the sport while maintaining the same motivation?

- It was difficult from another. In one way or another, I was constantly reminded that under different circumstances, I could have had one more Olympic gold medal. And, possibly, two.

- A serious test for the psyche. Did you expect your high jump career to be so long?

- I constantly told myself after 1988 that I had at least ten years of active performances ahead of me, and that I would probably catch some of the Olympics.

- In the end, we hooked three. But what happened in 1996 in Atlanta, where you were 12th, already the owner of a grandiose world record?

- I was badly injured. I've had a lot of injuries in general. Perhaps that is why it was not possible to jump at the Olympic Games as high as at other competitions.

- I remember very well how hard it was for you to win in Barcelona. Probably, it can be called a great success - to become a champion, showing the same and not the highest result with four other rivals.

- The Olympics are rarely predictable in this regard. This is one of the few competitions where it is important just to win. And I set myself up in advance to take each next height on the first attempt. My record at that time was 244 cm, at the Games I jumped 10 cm lower, but what if in the end I became the first?

- I know that many Olympic champions succeed in realizing the victory only after a few months.

- Oh, this is definitely not my case. Perhaps I was too eager for gold, too long waiting for it, looking forward to it. And, when he won, the joy was simply all-consuming. I lived with this feeling for a long time. It's just that the motivation has changed a little. I kept competing, I loved it, any tournaments were still a challenge, but deep down there was already a certain calmness.

- Do you understand that you already have the main medal in your life?

- You can say so.

- Yelena Isinbayeva once admitted: she wants her world record in pole vaulting to stand forever. Sound familiar?

- My record (245 cm - RT) has been held for three decades, and I'm not going to lie, it's a pleasure. It's like being present in the sector all the time, without speaking anymore. It seems that I have long moved away from active sports, the muscles have long ceased to react to how others jump, and these "others" compete, it turns out, all the same with you.

- In Sydney, you lost to Sergei Klyugin. A few years later, you said in an interview that if your world record is ever surpassed, it will be done by a Russian athlete. Do you still think so?

"Why not?" Maybe I'll even see it with my own eyes.

- You can often hear from weightlifters about their relationship with the barbell. Is your relationship with the plank also a different story?

- The bar is an enemy. With his character, mood. It was easier for me to tune in to jump in this way. That I must defeat this enemy at all costs and move on. Like in a computer game.

"Have you ever talked to heights?"

- Of course.

"And what did they say, if it's not a secret?"

- It happened in different ways. Sometimes he swore, sometimes he wound himself up. I said that I would jump over anyway, I would come out victorious. Sounds ridiculous now, right?

- Was it difficult to finish your career a year after the silver medal won in 2000 at the Sydney Games?

"I wouldn't say. By that time, I had jumped a lot. It was interesting to try something completely different. I tried, in fact. I was engaged in business a little, worked in the athletics federation, as a manager, coached a little. Actually, I still train my son Gabriel.

"Work for the soul?"

"No, I don't. For the soul, I have a musical group Salsa Mayor. True, I don't play myself. I'm the director there.

"And you didn't try to sing?"

"It's not mine at all. And then, all my life I adhere to the rule that professionals, not amateurs, should be engaged in this or that business.