Lucas Sáez-Bravo Madrid
Madrid
Updated Friday, March 29, 2024-13:08
When he was a child,
Adrián Vicente
(Madrid, 1999) would curl up with his father on the sofa in their house in Mejorada del Campo and watch films by
Van Damme, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan
. "They finished and I was already around the room kicking," he relives now that he made taekwondo his life, with a ticket to Paris (-58 kilos), where he will try to overcome the Tokyo quarterfinals and continue the Spanish Olympic tradition of this sport born in Corea.
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Editor: LUCAS SÁEZ-BRAVO Madrid
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But so many times the reaction to an unexpected event is what defines people, what propels subsequent plots. Six years ago, this lanky, smiling boy, who talks as fast as he punches, was 19 and found himself in the middle of a war. The Taekwondo Federation, based on the results, had decided that he would be the one to represent Spain in Tokyo to the detriment of
Jesús Tortosa
, who had achieved the place for the country. In the midst of attacks, complaints and insinuations, he opted for silence.
«I am a positive person and I face everything that way. But those months... I didn't say anything, I kept my mouth shut, I didn't act. But yes, it was hard. They attacked me a lot online, they insulted me, they called me 'place-robber'. Anonymous people. I was passing by. And I tried to keep everyone around me calm. But it was tough, difficult," he now remembers of that journey that forced him to "have to prove something." «I thought, if I don't win, let's see what they are going to think. He was top 10 in the world and they said he had just arrived. But in the European Championship I made the final. The only thing missing was the medal in the Games. Now it will come. The truth is that I matured," he says, if he shows a hint of resentment.
Because time seems to have proven him right. Last year she won world bronze and together with her friend, countrywoman and namesake
Adriana Cerezo
(both started in the same gym in Alcalá de Henares) they skyrocket national expectations (
Javi Pérez Polo and Cecilia Castro
also have a ticket ). «That's what we ask ourselves, where does tradition come from. We have a great background, the medals are guaranteed. The key is the high level that exists in Spain, in the internal competition that we have," she points out.
Adrián Vicente, during a training session at the CAR in Madrid. SERGIO ENRIQUEZ-NISTALMUNDO
Adri, who in addition to his dedication to taekwondo studies two degrees at the same time (Childhood Education and INEF), was not the typical child prodigy. «I didn't start until I was 12. There was a club exhibition that I would later go to. There were Korean athletes, kicking through the air, breaking wood... It finished and I said: 'Mom, I want to do that,'" she remembers the crush. «I had a bit of the biotype: tall, long legs... My coach saw it, but for more than a year we only trained. He had no basis. And the first competitions were terrible, I was blocked, I got very nervous. But I liked it. My parents told me, 'but why do you continue?'"
It was at a Spanish Championship in 2016 when he was convinced that it was really his thing. Five years later he was centimeters away from a medal in Tokyo, although that meant a "bittersweet" pill. "The following weeks he was sad and melancholic," reveals someone who champions his normality, his walks through Meco with his dogs on weekends, his vermouth and his disconnection dinners, that side so opposite to his aggressiveness in the workplace. tapestry. «I'm skinny, I don't look fierce... but I'm tough. I get into a fight and many times they have to stop me. I enter the clubs, I love it. But you have to be smart, if I go 8-0, I'm not going to keep going. But in training, if it's a fight... », laughs Adrián as he dreams of looking golden at the Grand Palais in Paris in a few months.