“I hope I have been fair to everyone,” says the Vigo sailor after his exclusion from the road to the Olympic Games.
MADRID, 5 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Vigo sailor Nico Rodríguez charged this Thursday against the Royal Spanish Sailing Federation (RFEV), feeling the victim of “a deception” for his exclusion along with Silvia Mas from the qualifying path for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, in favor of Jordi Xammar and Nora Brugman, and also calling the sparring scholarship offered to fine-tune that 470 class boat in mixed modality as “tiny.”
“Once they close this on Saturday, we no longer have a place for the Olympic Games. It is true that the Federation has proposed us to be a sparring partner for Jordi and Nora’s team,” Rodríguez revealed during a press conference held from the headquarters in Bouzas (Vigo) of the Royal Galician Sailing Federation (RFGV).
“But of course, given the circumstances that we have been deceived, that obviously the sparring scholarship they offer us is minimal… I don’t want to work to help them get a medal when I consider that they have used me, they have deceived and they have taken advantage of my judgment. At least I want to try to be as honest and a good person as possible, obviously the possibility of sparring does not enter my head,” commented the sailor from Vigo.
For this Olympic preparation, the RFEV has dispensed with the crew that it forms with the Catalan helmsman Silvia Mas. And so, the election of the Spanish representatives in Paris 2024 has been anticipated for months. The reason given is the best result of Xammar and Brugman during the World Championship held last August in The Hague (Netherlands).
“The first of all is that there is a formal error here, since the regulations say that only what will be taken into account between March of this year and August, not the last two years. As CPO or Olympic Preparation Committee of experts what they are, the previous situation and the end of the championship must be contextualized, and know that we arrived at the last day of the World Championship in fourth position,” said Rodríguez.
“It is true that after a bad last day we finished in tenth position, 18 points behind third, but mathematically it would be a medal option if we entered a ‘medal race’. For all this, it is very doubtful that it can be implied that We do not consider our team as a clear option for a medal [en JJ.OO.], having remained as seventh nation; “It would have been the equivalent of an Olympic diploma,” continued the man from Vigo.
Rodríguez added that “the results obtained by our team in the second cycle were determined by the erroneous information that was provided to us” from the RFEV. “The RFEV has deceived us regarding the procedure that was going to be carried out for the Olympic selection in our 470 mixed category,” he insisted.
“Our team had been repeatedly informed that the objective in this World Cup was to obtain a place for Spain and not decide the representative team in the Olympic Games, which would be done during 2024,” he explained about a system that the RFEV had decreed with “the sole objective” of “classifying the country” and “avoiding any type of fight between competitors in a common objective.”
In this sense, Rodríguez quoted verbatim from an email sent to him in June 2023 by the RFEV, which expressly stated what he had narrated at a press conference. “This is not an isolated communication, since in personal conversations what was said was repeated ad nauseam,” stressed the Galician athlete.
“As we say, by the RFEV we were expressly informed on several occasions that the selection under technical criteria would only be used in Olympic classes in which rivalry between teams did not exist, as occurs in the current one,” Rodríguez argued again.
Likewise, he indicated that this controversy has caused him problems with his salary. “It is a private issue, which will obviously be discussed with the lawyers. And well, I prefer not to say it publicly, but I can assure you that it is a respectable amount,” Rodríguez told one of the journalists during the press conference.
“I tell you one thing, I’m not doing all this for the money. If I had done it for the money, I would have filed the lawsuit two years ago, or a year and a half ago; and I’ve stuck it out until now. I’ve dedicated myself to sail, which in the end is my job, and I have decided that now because they are already cutting off my head. They are leaving me without what I really want, which is to fight for the Olympic medal,” he stressed.
“I am aware that I am stirring up the hornet’s nest; and when you stir up the hornet’s nest, well, sometimes you get stung. But I have a super calm conscience that I believe that in these two years no one has anything ethically or morally to blame me for, because I think I have been super fair at all times with all teammates in every way. And if I make a mistake, I apologize in advance,” he added.
“I HOPE I HAVE BEEN FAIR WITH EVERYONE”
“I hope I have been fair to everyone. Every time they have beaten us, and unfortunately there have been several, I have gone and given them a hand or two kisses. Whenever I have had them in front of them, there has been no problem because this is sport. And I accept losing as part of sport; just as we won last year, sport is losing and you lose many more times than you win, that is the reality,” he reflected.
The man from Vigo attended the World Cup last August two days after the death of his father. “I don’t regret having gone to The Hague because in the end I think we have shown that we are professionals and that despite my father dying two days before the World Cup we dedicated ourselves to this. Despite the adversities, we have shown that we are worth it, which I think is something important,” he said in this regard.
“I think it was also a personal challenge. Although at one point not going crossed my mind, I think it was important to go and show that we are worth it. I did my own daily purge every day in the shower, I played a song that He reminded me of my father and every day that’s when I came in, cleaned myself up and then smiled and worked,” he recalled.
On the other hand, he analyzed how his relationship is with his former teammate Xammar. “I came to consider Jordi almost like a brother. In the end, the whole experience we had for five years was something fantastic. It’s something that stays with me for the rest of my life, but unfortunately everyone makes their own decisions and we each have our own decisions.” conscience,” he lamented.
“These are things that I would never have done and they don’t fit into my head, into the values that I have been taught. But hey, this is life and there are disappointments. There are disappointments among friends, there are disappointments at work, there are disappointments in everyone.” places. What we have to do is get up and accept it as part of life and as part of the process. Obviously there has been mourning, there has been damage, I have suffered a lot with all this because I did not expect it and I did not want to think that it was true “he recalled.
“Obviously he had to move better than me, because I haven’t moved directly; I have faced them for various reasons [la RFEV], in addition to other things that are difficult to explain because I have no evidence. There have been more pressure measures throughout this year by the Federation, like when I am a father and I have to go away from Galicia for about 10 days; or like when in the process of grabbing Silvia’s endowment [Mas]”We don’t understand how it is convenient to have to go to Marseille to train,” he said.
“These are things that I don’t understand, they are movements that have been made to put pressure on us and that we have been moving forward. We believed that we were going to have our opportunity in the water; but when we believed that the selection was going to be in 2024, well it turns out that not and that it closes without prior notice,” he concluded.