“I’m a little girl, that’s how I enjoy myself, like a girl,” says Yulimar Rojas, a uniquely talented athlete, almost science fiction, before taking the triple jump on a mind-blowing trip to a new dimension. To a space where only she lives, a girl from Barcelona, ​​Venezuela, who was moved one day in front of the television watching Teddy Tamgho win a World Cup and decided point of fact, without additional, to resemble him, similar to that French , so distant, that it gave three boats and flew, and the arena was invigorated, and the stadium was excited, and she wanted to feel that emotion, that it would sink to the bones. It is gold in Tokyo, also, a world record with 15.67 in a test where the Galician Ana Peleteiro is bronze.

At 25 years old, Yulimar claims for himself that feeling in a vacant and warm arena in light of the fact that in Tokyo it is the warmth of his territory, and its mugginess, and not a magnanimous breeze eases up him, but rather he feels in his road, a young lady, and Serie. “This is my property,” he says. “Hot and moist.” In his first leap, 15.41 meters, he beats the Olympic record as doing as such, snapping his fingers, like a magician, so easy he makes a fluid and powerful race appear out of nowhere, wide steps, of more than 2.70 meters at the final, and he does not lose an iota of speed when, securely supported, at the end of the corridor, before the board, he takes a bounce, a step, a jump.

It rises, flies, stretches its perpetual body, its long legs, its 1.92m smooth, rich, and as adaptable, as fine as a riverbank reed. 17 stages and bang, bang, bang . This is the manner by which a boss plays in an Olympic last, who wins the first run through and has five to complete the cycle, the technique that she likewise says, similar to the music school of her nation and Gustavo Dudamel, and makes two record nulls, and refines , and refines, and Iván Pedroso, from the stands, exhorts and prompts, with his signals, with his hands, with his arms, a conductor with two soloists from his studio in Guadalajara.

And in the sixth, the explosion. The perfection. Whipped 2.6 centimeters from the clay, long hop , short step , very long jumpthat reaches up to 15.67 meters, an unexplored territory, another world, another dimension. The record of the records, 17 centimeters more, in a single stroke, than the 15.50 that Inessa Kravets, a Ukrainian, set in Gothenburg in 1995, two months before the woman destined to erase it was born as far away as in Venezuela. “But I am the same girl,” she repeats, “who got wet in the little ranch [humble home] of Pozuelos, in Venezuela, the girl who was also scared by storms, in the house that moved, which was soaked in rain” , He says. And now look. I am a consecrated Yulimar Rojas here in Tokyo, an example of the power of struggle and perseverance. And, wow, I have come to live this moment that to describe it the word is magical. And I have confirmed my power, in which I have always believed, in my great quality as an athlete ”.

Furthermore, similar to Ana Peleteiro, his soloist friend in the Afro-Cuban school that the hero Pedroso set up in the Spanish city that was the most agreeable for his better half, an aircraft attendant, close to Barajas air terminal, she started to cry subsequent to opposing with an episode of hyperventilation the inclination, and afterward it was a wellspring. Like Peleteiro, her companion.

For Rojas, a girl, a game. For the others, a matter of extreme intensity, life or death, almost. A triple contest like a long time ago was not seen, so extraordinary. Because Peleteiro also had reasons to cry with emotion. Determined to follow the path of greatness, stubborn as only she can be, the Galician athlete, also 25, also African blood, got hooked and grew, and jumped in her first Olympic final as she had never done before in all her life. Competing like the gladiator who announced that she would be, and was not joking, as if the sand pit were the arena of the Colosseum in Rome, Peleteiro needed to beat Spain’s record twice (14.77m in the second jump; 14.87m, one world-class brand, in the fifth, very short race, and, before, in the words of the Galician, “I hit myself twice in the face and the jump came out”) to quell the danger of the Jamaican Shanieka Ricketts, the silver medalist in Doha. Peleteiro completed third, with bronze, and it was not second, silver, in light of the fact that for the Portuguese Patricia Mamona the Tokyo track, Yulimar Rojas’ solicitation to all the triplists on the planet to follow her in her investigation of eternity was additionally the sign: she hopped 15.01m, a record for Portugal, and came next, the nearest to the incomparable Venezuelan.

Rojas, similar to the artists of Dudamel, puts the banner of his country on his back, similar to a tracksuit, and assembles his tears and the feeling he was searching for, and that he found in a vacant and warm arena, with those of Peleteiro, likewise wrapped on your banner. The Spanish competitor was relentless in 2012, junior best on the planet, and after much looking, and subsequent to becoming mixed up in the mazes of life, she was brought together in Guadalajara in 2017 with the existence she adores, with the Portuguese jumper Nelson Évora and with the educator Pedroso, producer of champions. “And,” says Peleteiro, who does not control emotion even in press conferences. “I was in the shit and Iván took me out.”