MADRID, 24 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Spanish taekwondo athlete Adriana Cerezo is starting the Olympic cycle towards Los Angeles 2028 “with a very clear mind and a great desire to start from scratch”, after the unexpected early elimination at the Paris Games that made her see the other “side” of the competition, something that she has accepted “well” and that has not deviated her from the path she has designed in order to “be able to continue supporting expectations with results”.
“I’m starting off with a very clear mind, eager to start from scratch and to lay the first block. I’ve realised that everyone around me is with me for the decision I make and to guide me along the way. I’m very excited, and the truth is that it looks very good,” said Adriana Cerezo in an interview with Europa Press after participating in the ‘Sports Aperitifs’ of the Universae Vocational Training Institute.
The Olympic runner-up at Tokyo 2020 is now beginning to “face situations that I’ve never faced before” and “manage emotions” that she hadn’t experienced before. “It seems like you’re afraid of certain moments like going back to the gym or doing an interview, but I’m also really looking forward to getting over it and facing it,” she said.
The Madrid native, who competes in the -49kg category, has not lost her hunger after her disappointment in Paris, losing in the quarter-finals to the Iranian Mobina Nematzadeh. “I’m going back to the gym with the same desire and the same enthusiasm, or even more. My objective is the same, my desire is the same or more, and I really want it, because if not, I wouldn’t be considering this,” she said bluntly about her desire to be an Olympic champion in Los Angeles.
The Alcalá native does not dare to say whether the high expectations of the people weighed on her in winning the gold, but she does recognize that the fact that the people had her “in their pools” and that she had a great result on her part, is something that has “excited” her and that she hopes to maintain for the next Olympic event.
“I don’t blame it on that because my internal expectations and my goal were gold, and the fact that people supported me and believed it was feasible has excited me and I liked it,” she said, while noting that she has felt “very supported” during the process leading up to Paris and also after competing. “I hope to be able to continue to support expectations with more results, and that, for Los Angeles, people continue to support me,” she said.
In just three years, the young athlete has gone from being the big surprise by winning silver in her Olympic debut in Tokyo, to being bitterly disappointed in Paris, which has meant a great learning experience for her. “Now it’s time for me to see this side, and I think we’re going to accept it well because we have the means, the people too, and we have a very clear idea of how we want to work and plan it,” she said.
The ‘Hankuk’ team she trains with was unable to celebrate its medal in Paris, but it did have a success in its ranks thanks to the 18-year-old Hungarian Viviana Marton in the -67 kilo category. About her and her sister Luana, world champion in 2023, Cerezo said that they are “two extraordinary people and that they have a super-clean mind.” “The only thing they need is to let themselves be guided and stay calm,” said the Madrid native, who considers herself a bit of an “anxious” person, and that sometimes “that is not the best.”
However, the twins are “very calm” and “managing everything very well.” “They are going to do very well because they also have all the people from outside, close to them, and who have also had this experience,” said the taekwondo athlete, who believes that Marton, being an Olympic champion, moves to “another level.”
“VIVIANA IS FANTASTIC AND SHE WILL DO EVERYTHING YOU TELL HER”
For her, “learning from the people around her is what will help her the most, because she is fantastic, and she will accept everything and think it is fine, and she will do whatever they tell her.” The Spaniard also does not hide that seeing the Hungarian on the podium at the Grand Palais made her a little “envious.”
“It was a moment of shock. When I saw her win I had forgotten everything, but when it was over there was a point where you said ‘I just achieved what is the dream and the goal of my life, which I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to achieve, which I just had an opportunity to do that I threw away’,” he explained.
Faced with this instinctive reaction, the current European champion questions “if it is normal” to feel this way. “She is my friend, she is my teammate, and I felt all the joy in the world, but on the other hand I thought ‘How annoying!’. If she were a person who doesn’t give her all and who you don’t like, it would be much easier to think ‘why not me?’, but she is the cleanest person in the world and she has made me a part of everything,” she thanked.
Cerezo knows that “it is incredible and inevitable” not to feel “happy” for the Hungarian, but she does not forget her selfish human side of thinking that she also wants that and that it is her “dream” and her “goal.” “I am going to try to accumulate all that energy in the sense of saying that if she has been able to do it, I am going to do everything possible to achieve it too,” she declared.
This strong bond is forged every day in the ‘Hankuk’ team in San Sebastián de los Reyes, where they are together every day with “the same objective and the same dream.” “The other day I heard a phrase that was ‘Take care of the people who are in your way, that you want to achieve your objectives, and that those people achieve theirs along the way,'” Cerezo said.
The Madrid native also remembers that “she would not have been able to be runner-up at the Olympics if her teammates had not been training” with her during the preparation before Tokyo. “Without that excitement after Tokyo and what Jesús Ramal and Suvi Mikkonen have achieved since then, Luana might not have been world champion, and without her sister’s success and the atmosphere that is generated in the gym, Viviana might not have been Olympic champion,” she stressed.
“It’s like everything is a cycle, we don’t know how it will develop, but if we follow this dynamic, we get motivated by what you have around us, because we are human. You always want what the person next to you has and what they have achieved. We are envious by nature in the good sense of the word, and we need each other. Viviana needs her sister to train, just like I need her, and Suvi and Jesús, and they need us. I think that this dynamic that has been created is what is giving these results,” he concluded.