The wind blows at 8.30 in the morning at the Sea Forest Waterway, home of the canoeing events.
The wind is blowing but the heat is unbearable and the thermometer already reads 29 degrees.
It's my life
sounds
like a blast.
Sing Bon Jovi: "It's my life, it's now or never."
Teresa Portela's life is her little Naira, to whom she did not know how to tell that this year she could not accompany her to the Games, that she had to stay in Aldán (Galicia) with her grandparents.
Teresa Portela's life is 20 years in the elite of canoeing, 20 of the 39 she has;
more than half life.
Teresa Portela's life is 15 world medals and 17 European, but no Olympic so far, until she wins silver in the K-1,200m final, behind Britain's Lisa Carrington and ahead of Danish Emma Jorgensen.
More information
https://elpais.com/deportes/juegos-olimpicos/2021-07-22/la-locomotora-de-saul-craviotto-una-piragua-hecha-a-medida-para-perseguir-el-oro-olimpico. html
Saúl Craviotto's locomotive: a tailor-made canoe to chase the Olympic gold
The eternal Maialen Chourraut, Olympic silver in whitewater
This Tuesday, the only Spanish woman who has reached six Games finally has her Olympic medal. A silver as big as your delivery. A silver that he has won with his soul, after almost staying out of the final. A silver that has made David Mascato, her physio and husband, cry like a child, who saw the final jumping from one side to the other, unable to stop still, wearing a cap, sunglasses and a Spanish flag. And then, he cries, he cries without stopping: "I can now die in peace, he has achieved it, he has achieved it", he does not stop repeating. He keeps Portela's shovel and takes out his amulet from his pocket. "Look, the puzzle is three pieces, today we complete it with the medal," he explains.
You are the owner of your destiny
are the words that are printed on the puzzle.
"And fate seemed not to, but it finally has its medal.
She saw her after the semi-finals and she was pissed off because she knew it didn't go well.
He told me that he had more, that he was fine, that he was going to get it, ”says Mascató.
He no longer has a voice.
Puzzle held by Teresa Portela's husband.
Teri, as everyone calls her, entered the semifinals outright by winning her series on Monday. His coach, Daniel Brage, warned the day before that it was the most complicated semifinal that could touch him because he shoved with the first four of the last World Cup. There was no margin for error. And the semifinal was already a heart attack. He did not nail the start like the day before and when he entered the finish line the results of the fourth [the last position that gave access to the final] to the eighth took a long time to come out. On the dock, Brage and David Mascató were biting their nails waiting for the judges to analyze the images of the
photo-finish.
“Fourth, fourth for a thousandth!” Exclaim the president of the federation, Pedro Pablo Barrios, and the other team technicians who are on the track and cannot be seated in the stands. "Be careful, it's not official yet," Brage tells them. He chewed as he ran to the hangar to look for her. A while later the result is made official, there are two fourths (Portela and the Swedish Linnea Stensils) and both reach the final that, exceptionally, will have nine canoeists.
Portela leads a life chasing an Olympic medal.
In London 2012, the Games to which he best arrived, he was left off the podium because the last one came out, he did not hear the
ready, set, go
of the start and although he starred in a great comeback, in the last meters he did not give him to climb the podium.
And in the head of Mascató, during the semifinal, hands on his face watching the giant screen, all those images must have passed him: "Not again eh, not again."
🥈 And the medal arrived for Teresa Portela!
This was the sprint with which the Galician canoeist achieved silver in canoeing.
👉 It is Portela's first metal after six appearances in the Olympic Games.
#ElSuperMartesEnRTVE # TokyoRTVE3A
▶ https://t.co/CBQxaEA6yj pic.twitter.com/IDgQskgv9a
- RTVE (@rtve) August 3, 2021
It's been 20 years since Teri made her national team debut.
20 years of daily efforts and sacrifices, from Monday to Sunday.
20 years of straining the body, of fighting against time, of trying to scratch hundredths of a clock in any small detail.
At a distance, moreover, the K1-200, so explosive that it is more conducive to younger athletes.
Normally, the usual process is to go to longer distances, of less power and less
sprint
and more resistant.
“But I don't abide by normality, if not, I would be wearing shoes at home.
I am governed by the feelings I have in training and I feel good ”.
And, in fact, when asked what the postponement of the one-year Games had meant, which she should have arrived at with 38, she answered that the others would also arrive with one more year, not just her.
For a few months he has been on his whatsapp status "I AM NOT UNTIL NEW ORDER". It is a way of making it official that it has entered competition mode. "As it arrives I need to be more focused on work, on recovery and I try to abstract myself," she confessed in Verducido (Pontevedra) where the set-up for the Games ended.
Once in Tokyo, when asked what he would give in exchange for a medal, he said that he already gave a lot, everything, and that he would not exchange his 20 years in the elite for an Olympic metal.
“I feel that I gave everything I could: work, many hours of training, hours taken from my family on a Sunday at 8 in the morning while I was on a canoe.
An Olympic medal is milk ... but nobody gives you one for being 20 years in the elite.
That is worth a lot to me ”.
Better a silver with 39 years in a distance in which the rivals are almost 10 years younger than her.
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