How a Facebook message from Caracas gave rise to Iván Pedroso's athletics factory

Iván Pedroso, below, with Fátima Diame, to his right, and Ana Peleteiro, in February, on the Guadalajara track.

Above, from left to right, Yulimar Rojas, Tessy Ebosele, Aliyah Whisby, Alexis Copello, Huang Changzhou, Héctor Santos, Jordan Díaz, Nubia Soares and Nelson Évora. INMA FLORES (EL PAIS)

La Fuente de la Niña is almost Maranello, a factory of champions from whose distribution docks valuable products leave expressly to conquer the market and the glory of Spanish and world athletics.

At the front, in his office at the Guadalajara athletics stadium, that is, walking next to the sand pits, through the corridors of the jumping area, the person in charge of him, Iván Pedroso.

Yulimar Rojas, the Olympic champion and triple jump world record holder, rests the weekend with a small psoas strain, so Pedroso flew to Paris on Saturday to guide Jordan Díaz to victory in the Diamond League meeting, the Spanish record holder (17.76m) and great future world triple jumper, who, with a jump of 17.66m, surpassed the Cuban Andy Díaz by one centimeter and the Olympic champion Pedro Pablo Pichardo (17.49m) by 17 centimeters.

Fátima Diame, the best Spanish jumper at the moment, and Tessy Ebosele, world and European junior triple jump runner-up, jumped Thursday in Castellón, and also Héctor Santos, long jumper who is hot on the heels of Eusebio Cáceres, the best Spaniard, and Huang Changzhou, the best Chinese jumper.

Only the Olympic medalist Ana Peleteiro, pregnant, rests.

Yulimar Rojas, training in Guadalajara last February. INMA FLORES (DIARIO AS)

It is the Pedroso factory, the training group from which the best quality comes out, the

of the jump.

“From the beginning the goal was this, to reach the elite as a coach,” says Pedroso, a 49-year-old Cuban who, as a long jumper of 8.71m, was Olympic champion in Sydney 2000 and nine times world champion, and who had years living in Guadalajara.

“I actually started 11 years ago training Teddy Tamgho [French triple jumper, world champion in 2013, one of only six in history to have passed 18 metres].

It was he who gave me all the strength I have now to pursue this profession, and now he is my partner in the group.

Then came Ruth Ndoumbé [Spanish triple jumper who retired young after a serious knee injury], and then, on Facebook, I took Yulimar Rojas...”

And then, suddenly, as if the jumping area of ​​the athletics track, so close to the A2, was actually a stage where a play is being performed, Iván Pedroso's heyday splendor, or something like that, the voice of the Cuban champion is buried under the overwhelming sound of reggaeton that comes from the great loudspeaker that Yulimar Rojas herself, the queen of the places, has planted in the middle of the lawn.

And that is the signal for her, the 15.74m woman, who will one day be 16m, and no one like her, to enter the scene.

A spark in Caracas initiates the great explosion.

Summer 2015. Yulimar Rojas, almost a girl, a 14-meter athlete with big dreams, sends Pedroso a message on Facebook.

would you train me

She knows about Pedroso because a couple of summers before, watching the World Cup in Moscow on TV, she saw Tamgho, the winner, hug the Cuban, her coach, and she said to herself even then, I want that man to train me.

“No, imagine.

I opened the gap for everyone to decide... Send the message, receive the yes, then come to Spain, start training in 2016, enter Iván's plans, the master's experience, what he knew... Rojas says.

“It was the best decision.

As a result of that decision she looks at everything that has happened... Everyone has decided to come to this team.

And the results speak for themselves.

That's what gives you credit

Yulimar Rojas, recently arrived in Spain, in February 2016.

And following the trail of wonderful Yulimar, the Portuguese Nelson Évora, Olympic champion in Beijing 2008, and his partner at the time, Ana Peleteiro, who was still looking to stabilize after the crisis that followed her title as junior world champion in 2012. “It's amazing, isn't it?

I had not seen it that way, but it makes me proud, it makes me feel privileged.

As a result of these good achievements that we have achieved together, Ana has come, Nelson has come, all the boys from this year have come.

We have created a quite wonderful group, quite united, and in spite of everything we all get along very well.

It's nice to have been the beginning of all this”, says the Tokyo Olympic champion.

“And I feel like the leader of all, yes.

Ivan lets me see it this way, you know?

For example, sometimes when we disagree on the issue of going to Venezuela,

which is one of the points to deal with a bit, to go to my country and spend the time that I have stipulated to have vacations, so Iván tells me, Yulimar, you are the leader, you have to set an example, you have to be here on that day that I tell you, that everyone sees you, everyone sees you as the base of the team, yes, yes.

Is that.

I also consider myself that way.

I try to be constant, never lower the level, and maintain respect in the team.

I am very happy to be in this team.

I feel like the leader, I feel like the mom, the oldest...”

Is that.

I also consider myself that way.

I try to be constant, never lower the level, and maintain respect in the team.

I am very happy to be in this team.

I feel like the leader, I feel like the mom, the oldest...”

Is that.

I also consider myself that way.

I try to be constant, never lower the level, and maintain respect in the team.

I am very happy to be in this team.

I feel like the leader, I feel like the mom, the oldest...”

Pedroso hears his name so many times that he turns around, looks, and understands that it is the signal for him to continue the narration.

“Yuli is the center of the group, as is Ana.

And the presence of Nelson since he arrived, being an Olympic champion, was very important for the group.

Now everyone trains and look where you look there is not an athlete who is relaxed, athletes are always ambitious, and this is the good thing about the group, look where you look there is always an athlete who is training hard, and encourages everyone.

Ana arrived at a very, very special moment, because the athletes I have are athletes who are on track, who have big goals, and Ana joined and little by little she entered into that dynamic of wanting more, wanting more, and that is what interests me, more than anything”, says Pedroso.

“I am only interested in athletes with ambition, who do not train just because they want to earn some money, no, I want them to be one of those who train because they like it, because they want to reach the top, they want to be the best.

That is what I look for in my athletes.”

And Yulimar adds, of course, that his example is the light they should follow.

“If Yulimar can, I can”, says the Venezuelan jumper, and that is how it is, with that mental disposition, with which the new ones who have joined this year arrive, Diame, Santos, Ebosele… “It is like that.

Everything can be achieved if you work for it.

If you keep it in mind, if you never give up, if you never lower your arms, if you never say no to anything... For example, Iván tells you, today, today you have 12 of 150, or 12 of 120, or you have multi-jumps, and we go to the hill, we go to the sand... And there is no no, there is always a desire to do it, to do it, to do it, and I think that makes the difference... They have a lot of ambition to get their titles , and to make a name for yourself among the world's elite."

“I try to make everyone equal.

I have strong, I have fast... And I try to bring them all to the same level... Ebosele is strong and I'm more into technique...”, explains Pedroso.

“I am doing with them the work that I did with my coach in Cuba, Milan Matos, who left the systems a bit... We admired the way the Americans worked, who were very fast, and the Russians, who they were all very strong.

When you put it all together, you must have everything even, not too strong, not too fast, everything on par, and it is more effective that way.

You have to constantly listen to the athletes.

They also know all the titles that I had and all the things that I have had.

And I always tell them, do you want to have all my titles?

Well, they have to train.

I don't relax anyone.

I always maintain the tension, setting more difficult goals.

And now,

better because there are long jumpers, triple jumpers, women, men... It's not just one like before... The more athletes of the same specialty are together, the training comes automatically, because you always look to the side and see, as if to say , this one is doing fine, me too.

That's the good thing about having a group like this…”

“I will never be in an office, I will always be on the track”, says the boss of all that.

And he looks dreamily beyond the highway that flanks the stadium, and the trucks and their noise... And from the next corridor, in which his compatriot Luis Felipe Méliz trains other future jumping stars, such as Cuban Lester Lescay, champion Youth Olympian, or the Peruvian José Luis Mandros, and beyond, in the high jump, Javier Sotomayor works with his son Jaxier.

"We are here for the moment, and my girl ties me here, but someone should see it and someone give me the opportunity to set up an academy or something... but someone has to come."

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