The world

Updated Tuesday, February 13, 2024-18:25

  • Interview The complaint of Hugo González, the new star of Spanish swimming: "I'm thinking about quitting"

It was the moment. At 24 years old, in full maturity, already graduated in Computer Engineering at the University of Berkeley and settled in California, a few months ago

Hugo González

resolved his disagreements with the Spanish Swimming Federation (RFEN) and focused on his preparation for the Games Paris 2024 Olympics.

It was the moment. At the Doha World Cup his horizon was clear in the absence of all the Olympic finalists in the 100 meters backstroke except him: neither the Russians

Evgeny Rylov

and

Kliment Kolesnikov

, current gold and silver medalists, nor the Italian world record holder

Thomas Ceccon

, nor the American

Ryan Murphy

not even the Chinese

Xu Jiayu

or the Romanian

Robert Glinta

, retired due to depression.

It was the moment. And she took advantage of it. This Tuesday González won silver in her event and gave Spain its first world medal since

Mireia Belmonte 's exhibition in 2017. Only the Yankee

Hunter Armstrong

, her training partner in California,

could surpass him and he did so by just two

hundredths, with the rest of the contenders far behind. The third, the Greek

Christou Apostolos

, finished an eternity away from both.

After his emergence at just 20 years old at the 2021 Budapest European Championship, where he won three medals - gold, silver and bronze -, his podium at the World Cup is the consecration of González as the reference in Spanish swimming that was previously the López brothers

. Zubero

,

Nina Zhivanevskaya

and Belmonte herself. Her absences in the World Cup force containment towards Paris, but her brand does not.

Because González, who always goes from less to more, this time started flying, in first position, commanding the test and thus touched the first wall. For 80 meters the gold was his and if he ran out, his time on the scoreboard, 52.70 seconds, placed him as an Olympic hope. At the Tokyo 2020 Games, in fact, with that time he would have been only behind the Russian couple.