MADRID, 15 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Madrid athlete Carmen Giménez, who at the end of September became the first Spaniard to compete in the Berlin Marathon in the wheelchair category, is clear that she does not run “to be the fastest” but for her son Bruno, died after being born prematurely, and “to help other people”, a role she fulfills both with the ‘Run for You’ Foundation and by being an ambassador for Liberty Seguros.
Carmen Giménez is the president of ‘Run for you’, an inclusive project dedicated to finding shared spaces between people with and without disabilities, to make adapted sport visible and to help initiation into adapted sport, providing materials and human resources, and in which his son Bruno is “the cause and the motivation.”
“The project and I are two sides of the same coin, I run for my son Bruno, on my athletics chair I have ‘Run for Bruno’ written and wherever I go that is read. My son is my cause, each one has the yours, I help people to run and to carry out that motivation,” Carmen Giménez explained to Europa Press.
The marathoner took advantage of her time at an event as prestigious as the Berlin Marathon to carry out her work with the foundation. “Wherever we go we always try to help because it is our mission and we have done so in the marathons that we have run to make way. In Berlin I was the first, but my mission is to make way and that tomorrow there will be many more women, and men too because there are only two (Rafa Botello and Jordi Madero) running marathons,” he stressed.
The Madrid native is clear that this low participation “is not a fair representation of reality” and for this reason, when she goes to a marathon, it is not something individual but rather it goes for “many people and for many causes”, especially that of his son Bruno.
“He is the one who opens the way for me and that is what I always try, I never separate myself from that. The fact that I compete, in the sense that I am technically a professional, does not separate me from the fact that I am a mother, that I am a person and that I am the president of ‘Run For You’ and I take, first of all, my son, and hand in hand with the entire foundation, which is actually the reason why we run. I don’t run to be the fastest, or from Spain, I run to carry my son and to help other people,” he warned.
AMBASSADOR OF LIBERTY INSURANCE
In addition, Carmen Giménez is also an ambassador for Liberty Seguros in order to fulfill “the purpose of giving visibility to disability.” “In my case in the field of sport and as a woman, as a mother and as an entrepreneur, as president of ‘Run For You’. I am delighted to collaborate with them because it is an entity that has a firm commitment to inclusion and especially to support for Paralympic sport,” he said.
The woman from Madrid remembers that there are more cases like hers, such as that of the visually impaired sprinter Alba García and that the insurer “chooses Paralympic athletes to be their ambassadors and link their image”, but that they also carry out other initiatives such as the Race Liberty, “whose bib proceeds go to Liberty’s young Paralympic hopefuls program.” “This program has been running for many years and allows young people with disabilities to get started in the world of sports,” she said.
And this step “sometimes is not easy for different reasons,” which is why it gives more importance to “visibility.” “Specific trainers are required, knowing the adapted sport, because each disability is very different and you have to be very careful with an athlete who has a disability so as not to cause any additional harm, and of course accessible sports spaces are also required. Furthermore, in Many times, as in the case of physical disability, additional material elements are required such as prostheses or chairs or a guide in the case of visual disability,” he added.
“All of these are resources that are sometimes difficult to access and Liberty Seguros has that commitment to Paralympic sport, to visibility, to the inclusion of people with disabilities and that is why I am delighted to be an ambassador and collaborate with them in that end,” he said.