Few things are more powerful in sport than an unprecedented barrier.
Writing an unprecedented story goes far beyond the adrenaline of the moment, the agitation of the result.
Completing an achievement for the first time opens a new horizon, reinforces the collective conviction.
In short, it pushes us to leave behind realities that we took for impossible.
If this helps us grow as a society, sport is an inexhaustible source of examples.
Canada achieved the first Davis Cup in its history this weekend, signing one of the golden pages of its modern sport.
A team led by Félix Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov, two young players with diverse roots, a sign of an increasingly globalized world, wrote a highly sought after chapter for Canadian tennis in recent years.
Tennis is an individual sport in which the strength of the group gains ground year after year.
Players are surrounded by ever-growing teams of specialists, facilitating extensive runs like we've never seen before.
The interactions through the networks break the athlete's bubble, something more isolated a few years ago.
And team competitions multiply, with the added spectacle of locker room camaraderie.
Canada has masterfully mastered that new reality, catching every contest that has demanded a peer-to-peer effort.
The ATP Cup that opened the season fell into their hands, for the first time the Laver Cup was left out of European power and the victory in the Davis Cup reinforces a trend that has strengthened like in no other year.
Most important of all is the future legacy.
In one of the countries with the greatest recent growth on the circuit, the achievement signed in Malaga reinforces the winning vision of future generations.
Feats of this kind turn players into pioneers, into visible figures for the youngest.
Examples to start a path where there is room for sporting triumph.
The Davis Cup final was an absolute boost.
If Canada had never conquered the competition, Australia, one of the historic tennis nations, has not lifted the Salad Bowl for nearly 20 years.
They are two examples of countries with enough strength to inspire the little ones and turn the racket into a real option on the way to professional sports.
When one begins to compete, having a reference figure plays a key role.
In my first steps, seeing the feats of Conchita Martínez and Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario, legends of our sport, was unconsciously a guide when working.
Having that marked course is a stimulus to value, a path to follow by which we feel privileged.
In so many sports, there are races because before there were teachers.
Therein lies the importance of what Canada has achieved.
It has been a path full of tenacity.
In the 2015 season, being just children, they managed to raise the junior modality of the tournament in Madrid.
Tennis is a sport that demands absolute dedication, where the level is achieved through permanent practice.
The group led by Félix and Denis has sowed the fruits they have just reaped for years, reaching the top of a mountain that they began to climb a long time ago.
That group union, that communion between colleagues, must be worked on with the dedication of a friendship.
Even knowing what the other needs with just a glance, intuiting his feeling on the track or finding the necessary word of motivation.
They are details that, at these levels, can decide matches.
What Canada has collected is only the consequence of a united human group between people, with different origins, who one day shook hands on the road.
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