Javier Gmez Noya, between desire and resignation for the Games: “Adapt, be efficient and do what I can”

Uncertainty about the coronavirus crisis, which has already suspended several tests, threatens to affect the preparation for its last Olympic event: “We have to be patient, make changes that nobody likes”

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  Mario Mola's feat: seventh in the Spanish championship
  

“Until the day you play a smooth shoot you are focused to the maximum …”. As if it were a puzzle of thousands of pieces, the preparation of Javier Gmez Noya is a lace of training, breaks, meals, trips, spikes and competitions. With age and his tenacious permanence in the elite, everything is measured to the millimeter, more if it is the Olympic year, more if it will be the last Games. “I get up at seven in the morning and until eight in the afternoon my life is triathlon“.

But how does an earthquake affect that comes to suspend, suddenly, competitions and even to question the very celebration of the appointment of Tokyo? Coronaviruses in sport are not just behind-the-scenes soccer games. They are not-so-mass sports athletes who give up their lives first by being at some Games and then because on that specific day of every four years everything goes well. In the case of the Galician, world legend and triathlon ambassador, with the Ironman as clear and profitable destiny after having debuted in Hawaii in 2018, the race that will be his third Games will not be played -Ro lost after a previous one in which he broke his elbow-, but the uncertainty of opportunity that will never return to present stalks him like so many others.

“In such a situation, I think about adapting, being efficient and doing what I can,” commented Gmez Noya on Monday with his usual phlegm, stopping in Madrid for an event with Banco Santander. At the moment, its roadmap has already been modified with the suspension of the first round of the World Series, which was due to take place on Friday in Abu Dhabi. After his period of concentration and preseason in New Zealand in which he was surrounded by a group of Spanish triathletes -among them David Castro-, Javi intended to debut in the Arab event as a contact (“I was not going to take it as a great objective, both for the date and for being a sprint “), to return to training in Pontevedra and play the following April 18 in Bermuda, already at Olympic distance. Although now …

Others who will fight him for gold in Tokyo – “I don't sign a bronze” – took alternatives to the race. Mario Mola signed up for the Spanish cross championship on Sunday in Zaragoza – he finished with an amazing seventh place – and Alistair Brownlee at the European Championship in Punta Humbra (bronze medal). For example. Changing plans in an impromptu way can become standard practice. “I do not rule out doing some local test to keep the point competitive. Follow the preparation in Pontevedra and look for a popular race or a triathlon of lesser level,” admits Gmez Noya, still without warning signs.

The feeling of the five-time world champion is a mix of resignation and uncertainty. Like that of so many others. “We have to prepare ourselves and think that the races are going to take place. We have to have patience, assume these changes that nobody likes, but that are for the common good of all,” he says, with the only hope that, finally, everything will be fine. “I do not have inside information. If the Games are suspended, it would be due to force majeure. We will have to make the decisions that are made. My feeling, I do not know if it is a wish, is that the Games are going to take place. I face this situation with ease because it is not in the hands of athletes. I hope they are celebrated, but I have no anxiety. I try to control the things that are within my reach. I'm not going to worry about something I don't know is going to happen, “concluded his common-sense plea.