His was the first gold in Spanish athletics.
He did it in Prague, in 1978, at the European Championships, in a 50 km walk.
“It was a dream come true.
In the race, everything was repeated just as I had dreamed it ”.
This is how Jordi Llopart remembered him, the man who broke one of the most significant barriers for a Spanish sport in blankets, impoverished, without means or attention after the lead years of the Franco regime.
This Wednesday he died after spending the last hours in an irreversible coma after a heart attack.
Leaving football aside, Spanish sport remained at the end of the seventies at the expense of the Don Quixote on duty, Manuel Santana, Ángel Nieto, Severiano Ballesteros, some cyclists such as Bahamontes or Luis Ocaña ... In that sense, Llopart's triumph in a sport like athletics and in a minority discipline like walking constituted a feat.
Excellence was achieved and Llopart was not alone but alongside a generation in which Josep Marín also stood out.
The two achieved first-rate successes and gave splendor and continuity to a generation that emerged in El Prat de Llobregat, where they were both born.
They are two legendary.
And the two created school, as rivals, as companions and as references when they were active.
Later they were also coaches.
It all started with Moisés Llopart, Jordi's father.
He was the one who led and promoted this sport in the Prat de Llobregat.
After the war, Moisés worked in the La Seda textile factory and it was there that he founded the club where the Spanish march was born.
Jordi Llopart also won the first medal in Spanish athletics at the Olympic Games.
The silver was hung in the 1980s, in Moscow, also in the 50 km march.
He was also an Olympian in Los Angeles 84 and Seoul 88. His thing ran in the family.
When I was 13 I was running cross and semi-cross events.
But he opted for walking and in 1976 he was proclaimed champion of Spain for the first time in the 20 km on the track, and two years later he won the first of his eight titles in the 50 km, the distance in which he achieved the European record with 3h 44m 33s.
Llopart and Marín discovered the march for the majority of the Spanish public.
“They used to tell us things on the roads when we were training, because of the swagger.
The medals were a great incentive.
There was a great sports lack of culture and it was not known that the march is the longest and oldest test, ”said Jordi.
It was not conceivable that you could become a professional in athletics.
Llopart combined his dedication to the march with his studies.
He was a technical health assistant, graduated in Tourism, studied Graphic Arts and worked as an administrative assistant in the finance business at the El Prat de Llobregat City Council.
After concluding his career as an athlete, he directed marchers such as Daniel Plaza, a gold medalist at the 1992 Olympic Games, Jesús Ángel García Bragado, was also in the athletics section of FC Barcelona and trained the Mexican brothers Isaac and Ever Palma.
But the Mexican government terminated his contract as technical advisor to the national team and he fell from grace.
In 2013, he was unemployed, like his wife, and for a time he survived on an unemployment benefit of 426 euros.
Later, he worked for Bluebonnet, a company dedicated to nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.
And he combined that activity with that of technical advisor to the Japanese athletic walking team.
“40 years ago, we cried with joy.
For the first time, thanks to you, we were on an Olympic podium.
Today we cry of sadness.
DEP, Jordi Llopart.
You will always be a legend of Spanish athletics ", was the message of the Spanish Athletics Federation." Jordi was the pioneer, the figurehead.
He showed that not only the Germans could win, the Russians ... He was the complex shooter ”, said Ramón Cid, federative technical director.