Ramón Cid, a wise man of athletics and life, often says that all great athletes have, in their genes, talent, the ability to be unique, resistance, muscular capacity, but that success, ah , success is only the result of a mental process, of work. Cid speaks abstractly, but he looks at María Vicente, the athlete he trains, the favorite who will be proclaimed today, at 22, world pentathlon champion on the indoor track of dark, icy and rainy Glasgow. María, known as Cid, who was an athlete (Olympic in Montreal and Moscow in triple jump and holder of the national record for several years, successor to Pipe Areta, her compatriot from San Sebastián, with 16.69 m), “arrived at the end of the desert crossing. “She has reached the end of the mental process that allowed her to overcome the role of child prodigy.”
María Vicente returns to Glasgow, on the same track next to the Chris Hoy velodrome where in 2019, at 17, she led the European Championships, with Jaël Bestué and Salma Paralluelo (the same Salma from the football team, yes) the Generation Z revolution in Spanish athletics. She arrives with the best world record of the year (4,728 points) in pentathlon where, in the absence of Nafissatou Thiam, Adrianna Sulek, Anna Hall and Katarina Johnson Thompson, four athletes with 5,000 points, among her rivals alone the current champion, the Belgian Noor Vidts. , has never achieved a higher score. There will be five events spread over 11 and a half hours (Teledeporte): 60 m hurdles (11:05 a.m.), high jump (11:55 a.m.), weights (2:20 p.m.), length (8:15 p.m.) and 800 m (10:30 p.m.).
More than a child prodigy, María Vicente was a prodigious young woman who, at 16, was proclaimed junior world heptathlon champion (100m hurdles, height, weight, 200m, length, javelin and 800m) and, at 18, junior European champion. To continue growing, he left his home in L’Hospitalet at the age of 19 for San Sebastián to study at the University and train with the Cid. Four years have passed. He overcame loneliness, injuries and frustrations, three length zeros at the European Championships in Munich, 2022, a tough Olympic experience at Tokyo 2021, with 37 meters in the javelin. A media noise that I was not looking for. Everything made her even stronger. “I just moved to San Sebastián shortly before the pandemic. You find yourself in a new place, completely alone… It was a very difficult time for everyone. I had to make do with what I had, but strongly believing in what I love and what I think I can aspire to or become is what kept me going.
“Since he has been with me, we have experienced very difficult times,” says Cid, 69, who also had to deal with the tough mental process of returning to training individual athletes after nearly three decades in as technical director of the Spanish federation. “And I, who convinced María that the pressure she feels is a sign that she is where she always wanted to be, fighting to be the best in the world, and with the possibility of being so, for the first time I feel this pressure, I’m nervous, I’m almost afraid that María, who is very intelligent, will see me like that.
But María Vicente already accepts the pressure and remains deaf to the noise of the character that she is, the great promise for so many years. “After what I went through, I can only be grateful to be in this difficult situation, so to speak,” she says. “I was talking with Ramón the other day, about oysters, what a feeling, right? To be able to say, now I’m risking this, I’m nervous, and Ramón tells me, yes, but it’s better that there is and not that you are in the room again about to enter the room operation. The feeling, even if it is uncertainty, is much better.
Every obstacle was a challenge. The first, the muscle injury suffered in February 2022, just after breaking the national record. “The injury was like, wow! It gave me a reality shock. Maybe my world as I have known it so far could end, and I don’t want that to happen and I have to give one hundred percent,” says the Catalan athlete, who sincerely accepts the almost paternal reproach that her coach repeated to her (“Like “All very intelligent people are very lazy: she is also a brilliant student who does the minimum to succeed. But athletically she is very ambitious, she wants to be the best .”) “Well, yes and no, partly,” the national record holder half admits. “I understand what he wants to tell me and I share it too, but in my brain before it was like, well, if I train well, that’s it, right? I mean, what difference does it make if I sleep at one o’clock or eat a chocolate bar? It is these small efforts that have been the most difficult to assimilate or include in my routine and daily life. And I polished them.
The second great boost to its growth, the next shock, was received in Budapest. In 2023, to recover from his injury, he decided to put aside his one great love for a few months: combined events. “Athletics wasn’t a sport that caught my attention because I thought it was just about running and getting tired and I didn’t want to do that. But when I went to the track and saw so many people doing so many different things, I loved the diversity there. That’s what got me hooked and that’s why I continue to do combination testing because there are many things to do, I don’t want to focus on just one,” he says. But she had to concentrate on the length and the triple, disciplines in which she is also one of the best in Spain. He competed in the World Cups in August and almost made the final. That would have sunk another one. “And I was about to sink,” he says. “I saw myself in those who… after the injury, I trained all summer with great enthusiasm, with great strength to reach one of the two finals, and I failed, and when I came back, it was like, damn, I gave now what was now my 100 percent, well, I’m going to give my 103 percent so that doesn’t happen again. I came back with a lot of ‘enthusiasm, I who always say: “please, Ramón, one more week of rest”, “please come, I deserve it…” Well, I came back with enthusiasm, ready to everything, to doing all the tasks, the filming, everything Ramón told me. Something clicked in my head and something changed. It all adds up and brings out the adult athlete.
On January 28, in Clermont Ferrand, in the shadow of Puy de Dôme, adult athlete María Vicente completed the best pentathlon of her life (8.24 s in hurdles; 1.76 m height; 13.84 m weight; 6.65 m length). ; 2m15.50s over 800m). “Clermont was a turning point,” he said. “To say, well, last year I was good, I didn’t have any injuries, I recovered and I was doing triples and lengths, and I had a good time, but I always opted for the combined, that’s what I like. I want to achieve great things in the combined events, and I haven’t done a pentathlon in a long time and I really enjoyed it. My training partners came, my partner, obviously Ramón, everyone was there to support me, and the truth is that it was very cool. Three weeks later, February 18, 60m hurdles. Spanish Championship in Ourense. María Vicente won the final with the best time of her life, 8.06 seconds. His body and his head, his nervous and neuromuscular system clicked and he accelerated before the hurdles, he did not slow down like before, and celebrating his victory he made a T with his hands, dedicating it to his partner of training and his training rival Teresa Errandonea, a great hurdler, who had announced her retirement due to injuries. And it was adrenaline and something more. “And just seeing the happiness on my face, I was really enjoying it,” he says. “Enjoying and having a good time is how things work best. And I’m super happy. I’m back in full force!
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