08/11/2020 - 17:42
- Clarín.com
- sports
As he had promised last week, Ariel Suárez returned to row in the Reconquista River, despite the fact that his sport cannot be practiced due to the restrictions due to social, preventive and mandatory isolation in the AMBA, due to the coronavirus pandemic. After the training, Prefectura personnel drew up a report for having breached the rules. But that did not intimidate him and this Tuesday he returned to the water.
"As long as football continues, I will continue," the rower had told Clarín on Monday. And so he did. He arrived alone, with the obligatory mask on and his boat in tow, to a public descent from the river and set off to row. It was his second contact with water since March, when all sporting activity froze due to the health crisis.
During the first months of the match, Suárez, an Olympic finalist in the London 2012 double pair and two-time Pan American champion in Lima 2019, trained at home, focusing more on physical preparation. But as the days went by, the need to row again grew.
And when last week it was confirmed that First Division football would be enabled to restart training, while rowing and other individual sports were still waiting for authorization, he warned on Twitter: "If football returns to training, so will I. ".
On Sunday he joined a group of people who practice tennis, golf, athletics, gymnastics, paddle tennis, boating and sailing, who claimed in front of the Quinta de Olivos. "I'm tired. They are discriminating against us. Why is soccer and we are not? There is no common sense what they are doing. How can they authorize eleven people, with substitutes, with everything that soccer entails, and not rowing or other sports, which have a protocol that has already been approved by (the Ministry of) Health and in which there is zero contact? "asked Suárez.
On Monday, as promised, he returned to the water. "I had an impressive sense of peace and freedom," he told Clarín a while after training. And he also assured that he is not concerned about what will happen to the act that prefecture personnel prepared for him.
The record that Ariel Suárez was created for going out to train in the river without authorization.
"They did their job with a lot of respect. They told me that a judge was going to communicate with me. But it doesn't worry me. The feeling of freedom that I experienced on top of the boat is much stronger than what could happen," he said.
The images he shared on social media went viral. There were those who criticized him for not respecting the quarantine at a time when the pandemic hit the AMBA hard. But also many, including several elite athletes and colleagues, who supported him and echoed his claim.
This Tuesday, Suarez rowed again. And it will continue to do so, even if the paddle has not yet received the official authorization to reactivate.