“Now to compete is to enjoy”, says Adriana Cerezo, now of legal age and whose smile before jumping on the tatami went around the world since the Tokyo Games and continues to infect all those who see and surround her.
In Tokyo she was 17 years old, she was making her debut in an Olympic event and her self-confidence amazed everyone.
Because competing is enjoying.
He enjoyed again in the Manchester pavilion, the Olympic rings tattooed on the lower part of the neck, where this Thursday the bronze was hung in the -49 kg category in the European that is disputed – with the public and without Russian athletes due to the invasion of Ukraine ordered by Putin - in the English city.
Knowing her competitive nature - she hasn't seen the final of the Tokyo Games in which she lost the gold by a breath in the last few seconds - she won't be entirely satisfied with the bronze medal.
The fight,
3-3 after the regulatory rounds, it had to be decided at the golden point and the Turkish Merve Dincel won it 3-1.
It was an early final, but the team wanted the Spanish and Dincel to meet in the semis.
And the Turkish prevailed.
In the morning, Cerezo had eliminated the Finnish Jenna Ylonen (22-2) and the Italian Martina Corelli (21-1).
Between one fight and another, Jesús Ramal, his coach, told
: "I've seen her very focused, I like the way she's doing it."
And at the same time he warned: "the semis are like an early final, the Turkish is a very tough rival, she is one of the favorites because of the latest results."
Ramal watched the fights from the stands because the federative regulations require that the federative technicians in European, World and Olympic Games sit down with the taekwondists who are not from the CAR (High Performance Center).
The
wonder girl
has grown up in this European Championship, the first in which she competes as a senior.
She used to do it before and collect medals, but she was still a junior or sub-21.
She continues with her studies, she is in the first year of criminology at the University of Alcalá.
Focused and disciplined, always, in everything she does —her parents say so and her coach also says so—, she combines classes at the University with training, with the multiple commitments derived from an Olympic medal and helps herself with
mindfulness
.
They are ten-minute daily meditation techniques that she started using a long time ago that help her focus and not go on a mile a day all day.
More information
VIDEO REPORT: The Hankuk Club: How a good atmosphere forges an Olympic medal
He balances himself so he can put it all together, as any
normal
teenager is supposed to try to do .
But she is no longer the stranger who
just
studies and does taekwondo.
She is Olympic silver.
And she in Tokyo she realized what that meant when she went back to the locker room to collect her things after the last fight, she took a look at her mobile and saw that there were “millions” of messages.
“Little by little I am assimilating what I have achieved” she confessed a few days later to this newspaper.
The whirlwind that she is generated a tsunami that hit everyone.
To herself, to her surroundings.
But, says Jesús Ramal, her coach, that Adriana herself, her family and the club in which she has been trained have taken it upon themselves to continue with their feet on the ground.
And in fact, on the walls of the Hankuk everything is still as before.
The only photo of Adriana is the one she had before the Games, of her first medal (12 years old, cadet category) in a US Open when she was a tadpole.
There are no Tokyo posters.
Any.
It is the little world of hers that she wants to remain small and
protect
her and not make her forget where she came from.
This is how Ramal explains it.
“We have tried not to change our way of life too much and we have managed it well.
Of course, the requests for interviews and reports have multiplied, she is very young and these are new situations for us, too, since we have always been anonymous, working in the shadows.
And now we meet a sports star.”
That she keeps her feet on the ground.
And with a family that has taught her to do it since she was little.
Her father still shows up at the club from time to time to watch her train, but he sits in a chair far from everything, discreet.
And he says: "Sometimes, when we got together with other parents and they told us about the little problems they had with their children, we were almost ashamed to have to say that Adri never gave us one."
Everyone is aware that moments like these – an Olympic silver and the path to gold in Paris 2024 – must be enjoyed because they are unique.
“Adri generally focuses on herself, she is intelligent, disciplined, she listens.
We must not forget that she is 18 years old and there have been difficulties, of course.
She herself acknowledges that the post-Games maelstrom was brutal and that it is calming down little by little.
“We tried to manage in the best possible way something that we were not used to.
Fitting it in became difficult because it's not our style to stop and put taekwondo aside."
He has had and continues to have daily talks with his coach about the weight of responsibility.
She explains it Ramal: “Before she was an unknown, now not.
And in the last championships prior to the European she has been able to do that a little, she was eager to demonstrate.
If she didn't come up with something or if she quickly didn't get a point, she would get angry.
She was anxiety for wanting, but we have improved it”.
And what he wants is to compete and enjoy.
It wasn't always like that, she herself admits.
She fell in love with taekwondo after trying tennis, figure skating, ballet, flamenco.
“I remember crying because I didn't want to go into the flamenco room”.
She until she tried taekwondo;
but there was a moment, when she was ten years old, when she wanted to leave him.
“It has always been my life, but when it came time to compete at a high level, I didn't know what that meant, because I only did taekwondo for fun.
It caught me so suddenly that I started to have anxiety, ”she confessed in this video report.
Her parents took her to the Hankuk club when she was 11 years old.
And there, says Suvi Mikkonen, the other coach, she dazzled everyone.
“Each child that comes here has something different, for the competition group what we are looking for is that he has something special.
And Adriana, apart from the flexibility that is an important factor, was happy training.
She wanted to train so much that she came alone two days a week [at that time there was no age group for her] she was with Jesus and with me and she was happy.
And she didn't need anything else.
She enjoyed that attention, being there, training.
And that's the special talent we're looking for."
You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on
and
, or sign up here to receive
our weekly newsletter
.
Exclusive content for subscribers
read without limits
subscribe
I'm already a subscriber
