Mauricio Codocea
02/10/2020 - 19:43
Clarín.com
sports
In Nadia Podoroska's house, no topic was ever avoided, perhaps because of her mother's background as a Philosophy student.
This detail and the difficulties that she soon had to face in her career shaped her to stand out for her
maturity
.
Those who know it put that characteristic next to others: intelligence, analytical skills and also
resilience
.
Is that behind this success at Roland Garros, the Parisian brick dust that will receive her in the round of 16, there is
a path traveled with patience
from those first steps that sounded like pebbles at the Fisherton club, the same one where she distributed her first shocks. a certain Luciana Aymar on the ball.
There, little Nadia, one of Irene and Marcelo's three children, began to wield the racket, eventually becoming pharmacists.
The next step was to go to
Charly
Rampello's
school
on Route 9.
That teacher / coach was the one who accompanied her until about two years ago the young woman born in 1997, who decided to take a new course working with
Emiliano Redondi
and
Juan Pablo Guzmán
.
And
Martiniano Orazi
is his physical trainer.
He had on his back the backpack of being
the great female promise
.
She earned her first professional points at age 14, started giving interviews and dreaming big thinking about imitating Gabriela Sabatini, who
retired before she was born
.
Podoroska is the first Argentine in the round of 16 at Roland Garros since 2011. Photo EFE
In her native Rosary she found her nickname,
La Rusa
, despite the fact that her lineage is actually Ukrainian.
Legend has it that a worker from the newspaper "La Capital" in the design area was responsible for the nickname when she suggested it during one of those editions of a note with the precocious tennis player.
Reaching the main draw at the US Open in 2016 reinforced the idea that you could be facing a tennis gem.
But fate wanted to disrupt those ideal plans and change them for
recurring injuries
.
Almost two years passed before Nadia was able to compete again with some normality.
So he decided to go to Alicante, Spain, to be close to the tournaments in Europe.
He did this by
counting every peso in his pocket
, measuring every meal, every expense.
Podoroska knows what it's like to fight her in this environment:
just a couple of months ago she was able to rent a small apartment
.
Until then, she
lived on loan
anywhere that agreed to receive her: a friend, a colleague, a coach.
He sought to squeeze every penny, even if it meant looking for flights not only at the lowest possible cost but also having schedules to spend the night at the airport and sleep there if necessary.
9 years ago in the Trench in a @HazandoTenis we knew Nadia Podoroska 🇦🇷 @nadiapodoroska from 14. pic.twitter.com/yexti9DwDw
- BATennis (@BATennisCom) September 25, 2020
Last year his career was decidedly difficult financially.
Increasingly hold was doing more
uphill
.
The old ghosts that had attacked her in the days of injuries seemed to return, turned into skinny wallets.
His success at the Lima 2019 Pan American Games, in which he won the
gold medal
, allowed him to slightly stick his head out of the water by accessing an ENARD scholarship for "Pan American excellence."
"I hope I can get sponsors; I am in a very delicate situation," she acknowledged after getting on the podium.
And in that sense there is another unavoidable reality in this arrival to the round of 16 at Roland Garros: it has both joy and monetary relief.
The at least
$ 223,768
that Nadia will take for reaching the fourth round will not solve her life, but it will allow her to face the next few months of her career with greater calm - and optimism.
The other calm, the one that could well allow Rosario to reach this happy present, has to do with her own inner search after those hard moments.
Nadia Podoroska, synthesis of resilience.
AP Photo
A year ago Nadia started working with
Pedro Merani
, an Argentine based in Doha, Qatar, who is a bowling coach and directs the National Team of that country.
He put together a system that circulates between
neuroscience
and bompu Zen, a variant of that school of Buddhism that is stripped of the religious question.
Nadia, those who know her say, is super convinced of this methodology, so much so that
it changed her head
.
"It is an aspect that I had never worked on: it is not related to psychology, but rather it is more
a mental training for the competition
. It has daily exercises of meditation, relaxation, visualization. It is a process of self-knowledge," he explained these days.
After all the fighting, it's time for rejoicing.
Although the path does not necessarily have to end here:
the stairway to heaven has many more steps
.
HS
Look also
Roland Garros 2020: nobody deserves it more than Nadia Podoroska
The happiness of Nadia Podoroska after getting into the round of 16 at Roland Garros and the encouragement of Gabriela Sabatini