That a boy from the third poorest cordon in the outskirts of Buenos Aires performs as a javelin thrower sounds as implausible as an inhabitant of the Amazon to succeed in making igloos. But that was the miracle of Braian Toledo, one of the only three Olympic finalists of Argentine athletics of the last 68 years, since Helsinki 1952. Toledo climbed to tenth place in Rio 2016 and at 26 he accelerated his final preparation for his third date Olympic, in Tokyo 2020. This Thursday he died in a motorcycle accident in Marcos Paz, the town where he was born 60 kilometers from the center of the Argentine capital.
Marathon runners, long jumpers and triple jumpers brought to Argentina Olympic medals of all metals in the first half of the 20th century, but then the national athletics sank into a black pit from which only isolated phenomena such as Toledo could rescue him. Together with the other two recent finalists, Germán Lauro (sixth in bullet launch in London 2012) and Germán Chiaraviglio (eleventh in pole vault in Rio 2016), who did the most for the reconstruction of the base sport of the Olympic Games in Argentina was the most unlikely young man, a boy from a very humble family in a discipline without any tradition in the country.
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Toledo attracted attention when, at 16, he won the gold medal at the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore 2010. It was a glow in a country with a great sporting tradition (not only football), but away from the great deeds in the three most emblematic Olympic sports: athletics, swimming and gymnastics. His activity at that time had only 164 federated javeliners, between men and women, of all categories of Argentina.
Toledo's was not only a unique story, but also in the opposite direction. The new hope of the Argentine athletics, that already competing between majors obtained a bronze medal in the Pan-American Games of Guadalajara 2011, was raised in a wooden box without running water.
What leads an Argentine kid , although the question may be extended to the rest of Latin America, to want to throw the javelin? In the case of Toledo, it was chemistry with his inspirational guide, Gustavo Osorio, who ran a municipal athletics school in Marcos Paz and who in fourth grade of primary school had already been his physical education teacher. Among them was born a relationship that went beyond sports: Osorio became the father that Braian never enjoyed.
The mother of the future prodigy, Rosa Hidalgo, who after her separation had to take charge of the family economy and worked 10 hours a day as a maid, recalled a few years ago how that initial Big Bang happened. "One day he tried and did it so badly that the tail of the javelin hit him in the back. He came back crying, angry, saying that he would never return to the track," he recalled.
Since no one could think that Toledo (or any other Argentinean) would find his future in the javelin, in his daily urgency he helped his mother to raise the money that would allow them to subsist along with her two younger sisters: she did her homework for her classmates. school in exchange for a few coins and in a 20-liter bucket carried water from the only tap in the Martín Fierro neighborhood to his house, 50 meters from the beginning of the field.
Little by little, however, the successes began, the private sponsors and the precarious running track of Marcos Juárez changed as training venue for the Cenard, in Buenos Aires, the high performance center of Argentine sports. Every day I traveled back and forth over 100 kilometers aboard the small Osorio motorcycle. He also received the help of the Hungarian embassy in Buenos Aires, which gave him a javelin from his country (in Argentina they are not manufactured and imported ones are very expensive), and between 2006 and 2009 Toledo went from throwing 34 meters to 79 meters. Because of their lack of natural technique, Cenard biomechanics helped him form a new launch model.
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner visited her house on dirt road in 2010 - which she defined as "almost a ranch" -, instructed her renovation and called it "the example of Argentina we want". His death was as unexpected as his success.
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