Laia Palau: “I have been the resistance. I wanted to die being a diva."

Laia Palau (Barcelona, ​​43 years old) was slow to fall in love with basketball, but that late crush allowed her to stretch out a legendary career.

The Catalan base retired last summer with Girona with a unique record: 14 Leagues, 11 Cups, 2 Euroleagues, 33 titles in total with the clubs, plus 12 medals and 314 international matches with Spain, absolute records for men or women.

The girl who studied Social Education, who worked in prisons and health centers, a free spirit, became a beast on the track that devoured what was put in front of her.

Today she is the sports director of Uni Girona and team leader in the Spanish team.

She and she keeps thinking about winning and winning.

Question.

Do you miss playing?

Reply.

No, and it's very strong.

Being a player is very action, very immediate.

Your life is to death and that disappears.

Now I see the training of the players, the early mornings, the trips, the bruised body, and I think that this feeling is no longer changed by how I am now.

The day to day of total demand as I have understood it hurts you.

I did it a lot and that's it.

Q.

More than retiring, has it been then to stop playing?

A.

Yes, now I am in another dimension.

Basketball is infinite.

I have a great objective, which is to improve the structures, how we can promote this, how the players can have the same opportunities, the best place to work... I'm looking at that, which is super interesting because it is building an identity.

Q.

So do you live with the same passion and pressure?

R.

I am working like never before.

I played my last game on a Thursday and on Monday I was in the office.

At Girona, in addition to being sports director, I am responsible for grassroots basketball together with Basketball Girona, and it is a big project because it was to include 14 women's teams within the structure of Marc Gasol, who was 20... It was a pretty heavy summer.

I think it's the year I had the least vacation.

I said to myself: "Aunt, you're having a terrible time."

And a good friend: “Laia, you have to tend less, not more”.

It hasn't been like that, but I love it.

I feel super lucky because there are a lot of players who leave and then feel a void.

My psychologist told me: "Hey, it's not worth leaving one addiction to get into another."

And it's just what I'm doing.

I understand the sport in this way, very to death.

And I prefer it that way

Q.

Obsessive?

R.

Yes. I am very addictive, very obsessive with what I do.

Already knew.

We athletes have to be somewhat obsessive.

Every day you are so focused on performance that it rules your life.

It's not just the hours that you come to train, it's the food, the rest, the physio... that's the lighthouse that guides your days.

Now I'm not on the track but I have the same obsession to win in the sense of improving.

Laia Palau, in a training session with the national team.

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Q.

How do you think you are remembered as an athlete?

R.

As I am already feeling it.

They have withdrawn my shirt at Girona and, more than that, my tribute is that I have a job at this club.

That my value as a player goes further, that I have value as a person.

I have been the resistance, the persistence, the resilience to say "it's that the aunt is 38 and she's still there, she's still there...".

Because I wanted to do it that way.

The fact of being a base indicates many things, it is making decisions, leading on the track.

And pass balls, which has been my roll.

It was not going to be the aunt who decided games, but more of a team.

And that's what I'm trying to do now, make a team, detect talent and promote it.

Q.

How did the withdrawal work mentally?

R.

Leaving the sport is not easy, and whoever says that they are not afraid of it, I do not believe it.

Our world is very particular and it ends at a time when you are very young for life and you have to do other things.

I had been preparing for 10 years, thinking that retirement was very close, and I have stretched that life a lot.

I have worked with a psychologist for this moment.

And I have the feeling that my transition is being very natural.

I wanted to decide when I would retire, not feel like I was being injured, I couldn't be available.

I wanted to die a diva, on that level, quit when I was good.

I also had my environment very trained.

I told them that when they saw that it was already embarrassing, please be honest.

Physically I could have gone on for another year.

But I had a conversation with Chichi Creus and he told me:

“You have to quit the year before you feel like you have to quit.

Anticipate”.

My career has been marked by winning a lot and last year with the national team and with the club we didn't win anything.

I saw signs.

Q.

Have you left a legacy?

R.

I realize that now.

I always look far ahead.

The retired shirt?

Well, she just hangs there and that's it.

It overwhelms me a bit.

When I won a gold medal, I already thought about what was going to happen in the next game.

Now I have become this character, I know that I have a certain impact.

I was captain of the national team at a moment of splendor, a benchmark, a speaker, and I have tried to convey the values ​​of this sport.

I don't want to lose that.

It makes me excited, but it also generates responsibility.

The Uni Girona players, with Laia Palau holding up the trophy, celebrate winning the Queen's Cup.

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Q.

Would you like to be a coach?

R.

Yes. I will end up being.

But I felt the need to take some distance from the track.

If I had been an assistant, for example, many things would have gotten mixed up, the feeling of saying that this has to be the way it is because I play it that way.

It has been very intuitive.

I will be a coach because I carry it inside.

I like dealing with people, the human relationship.

Q.

How do you remember that Laia from the beginning who didn't know if basketball was her world?

R.

Those doubts have led me to where I am now, and I doubt a lot.

I question myself a lot about what I do every day, how I want to do it… I didn't know if I liked basketball enough to dedicate my life to it.

Without those doubts, I would have been burned.

I have had this longevity because I fell in love with my work late.

As the pieces have been fitting together, and also thanks to my physique, mentality and spirit, I have been liking it more and more, and I have left it when I liked it the most.

I felt there was a lack of freedom.

I am a very restless person, I like many things, and I liked the world of basketball just enough.

I had a conflict with the competition because of my mentality.

I studied Social Education and I liked to think that we can build better things.

The world of competition as such made me lazy.

I didn't fit in there

It didn't fit with my ideology of doing the best we can, but without this brutality of this world, of going over everything.

Until I disciplined myself and educated myself to be a competitive beast, I had a lot of conflict because I didn't know if I wanted my life to be like that.

He has something very soldierly, I'll kill you or you kill me, a very primal thing.

“It is difficult to build a team while glued to a screen”

In her university youth, Laia Palau dreamed of being a theater actress and changing society through culture.

“I would have liked that world, but I was given a talent for basketball.

Life took me this way,” she comments.

Maturity has given her another look at herself, and also at such a different generation.

“Today the players have personal trainers, nutritionists, psychologists… we grew up with the stone, it was more basic.

They have so many opportunities, especially with mobile phones, which affects the construction of their personality.

Sometimes I think it's hard to build a team with everyone glued to the screen.

Before you talked more with your colleagues, today there is more individuality.

I miss humanity.

The lack of resources stretches the imagination.

There is also talk of the overprotection of children.

The confrontation with one's own limits today is less.

She has missed the 'this is to death because I have nothing else' thing.

They don't have this need because today they have many more things”.

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