MADRID 8 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish ‘rider’ Lucas Eguibar is “very motivated” for a new season in which he wants to return to his “place, which is winning”, after six “long” months due to a rupture of the Achilles tendon, but He has “no doubt” that he will return to his “one hundred percent”, at the same time that he confesses to being a follower of Ilia Topuria “for a long time” because of his “mentality”.
“The Games are a motivation, but I still see it as a long way off because, honestly, I am coming from six months that have passed very slowly, and I am working on my best version. These six months I have been thinking about this season because there is a lot left for the next one and What I want is now, to show what I want to do now. I am very motivated, because I want to return to my place, which is to win,” Eguibar expressed in an interview with Europa Press.
The Spanish Lucas Eguibar, snowboard cross world champion in 2021, tore his Achilles tendon last March in a serious fall, at the World Cup stop in Cortina d’Ampezzo, and began a long and difficult recovery. more uncomfortable than I thought. “I have never had to be unemployed for six months. I have had my moments and I have tried to spend them with people around me who have accompanied me a lot,” he confessed.
“Above all, I have tried to hold on to the fact that I was very motivated, that I was doing things wrong and that I wanted to change them and I think I can do it quite well,” he added, although he acknowledged that returning to the table in September in Argentina was hard.
There, the Basque received “a shock of reality”, after a few “painless” first months. “As I put on the boot it started to hurt a lot, I saw the stars. After the Achilles operation it’s still much wider and it’s quite tight and it hurts. So, little by little,” he said.
“It wasn’t like going backwards, because this whole process has been long and I’m not like before, but it was a moment of saying ‘I’m still not like I thought,'” he admitted, convinced that he will return to his best level. “It is an injury in which you will need more or less time, but I have no doubt that I will be one hundred percent again, and I have been very convinced throughout the process. That has not worried me,” he expressed.
For this reason, he continues to work “against the clock to be able to reach the preseason and the season”, which starts from December 13 to 15 in Cervinia (Italy). “That’s what has taken me a little longer to get my head around, to be able to arrive on time for the races, but I’m not going to miss any races,” he said confidently.
“I have always tried to see the path a little bit. If it took me to one side and my back was bad, I tried to think about something else or tried to advance in another aspect. If the physical was not with me, I tried to focus on the mental, and thanks to I have been making a lot of progress. With the Achilles injury I have tried to do the same thing a bit,” he noted, remembering his back problems from last year.
The Achilles injury was a sign in a season in which he needed a change, although “it was not bad.” “I was already thinking that my season was not very good and that I wanted to change something for the following year and having the injury was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. I looked at what things I was doing, what things I had to remove and that’s why I’m very motivated this year, because I have changed quite a few things and I think I am doing quite well,” he said.
“A CHAMPION IS BUILT AND THIS YEAR I WANT TO DO IT”
And, perhaps, his physical problems have prevented a better version of Eguibar from coming out. “I’m sure that in many races I would have done better. Like in the China Games, when I competed with a lot of pain, just before the back operation. But I have also been learning things. I have been trying to be much smoother on the board , which I think suits me quite well. I am always quite aggressive and when the snow is very hard, I feel very comfortable,” he analyzed.
“When the snow is soft, I don’t feel as comfortable and I feel very slow. And if I try to use a lot of force or have physical movements, then I lose speed. So I try to see the positive side. I wouldn’t know what would have happened to me without so much pain, without these injuries. But we are here and it is what it is,” he added.
Despite the injuries, the 30-year-old ‘rider’, in addition to the gold in 2021 at the World Cup, can also boast two other world silver medals in 2017 individually and in teams with Regino Hernández, in addition to winning the prestigious Globe of Cristal in 2014-2015, a title that he touched in 2022-2023. But “there is no secret” to staying at the highest level for more than a decade.
“After many years, you try to change things and when it doesn’t work out for a few years, when two years ago you were runner-up in the World Cup, you have to change a couple of things and those things ended up being much worse. And what I’m trying “This year it’s going back to the base, which is often what people don’t want to work on. Working from the base and starting from scratch and that’s what I’m trying this year,” he revealed.
Furthermore, Eguibar believes that a champion athlete “is not born a winner”, although you can “be born with a series of talents or in circumstances that teach you much more about life”, like the Spanish-Georgian wrestler Ilia Topuria, a reference for the Basque.
“I am a big fan of MMA and UFC and I have followed Ilia for many years. He has a mentality because he came from war, he has lived through it and knows what it is like. He fought to eat, he comes with that type of mentality and that It is what has built him. That is totally built,” he defended.
And the “difficult” thing is to stay in the elite. “I had the desire and the motivation to want to be the best in the world. And the most complicated thing is, once you have been, once you have won, to continue winning. That is the complicated thing. And that is totally built. It is very difficult to repeat the same physical and mental state that has taken you two years to advance,” he argued.
“In the end, new training techniques are emerging, people are emerging who are doing different things to you and you want to try. And the sport is advancing. In these years I have tried to do things and continue advancing, but there are some that do not work and others yes. But as I said, that is done and a champion is totally made. This year I want to do it,” he explained.
Finally, Eguibar thanked the president of the Royal Spanish Winter Sports Federation (RFEDI), May Peus, for his work at the head of the entity, after he has already been in office for a decade. “They entered with a not very good situation and managed to turn it around. That is thanks to their great work. I have seen a lot of changes and I am very proud to be part of it,” he said.
“It has been very noticeable that there is more youth. When I participated in the Spanish Championships there were barely 10 people and we only had one race and there were times when that race was not held. And today there is already an equal circuit with three races. That It is the result of the work that has been done before this Federation,” he concluded.