“Did you know? I still go to technique classes once a week. Many tell me that I don’t need it, but everything evolves, everything improves. For example, now the roll is very important, turning your body with each stroke to reduce the surface that hits the water. In my time it was not like that, we all swam like a stick, without moving. It’s very important to keep learning, to keep the brain going.”
Speaks Mari Pau Corominas, the girl who opened the waters, the first Spaniard to achieve an Olympic diploma. At the age of 16, in Mexico 68, during the Franco regime, when only women traveled to the Olympic Games, she was seventh in the final of the 200-meter backstroke. At 71, now, she continues to swim, the last one, last Saturday, in the Begur Marathon Cup, where she covered 3.5 kilometers.
From his beginnings in the pool of the Betania school in Barcelona, his trips by train to Sabadell, the support of his family in a difficult time, his Olympic success, his training with Mark Spitz in Indiana or how he retired to 18 years old due to lack of help, he doesn’t feel like talking much. “It’s just that more than 50 years have passed!” He complains. But of his current preparation, he is happy to offer details.
“I have never stopped swimming. When my three children were born I didn’t have that much time and it cost me more, but I’ve always supported myself. Now I go to the pool two or three times a week. I’m in a group with several veterans who are very passionate: they love to go cross-country, compete in championships… I practically only train, I go to a few places, I’ve already experienced all that competition, but I enjoy a lot with them. When I was young I just wanted to swim fast, break records, but now I love to pay attention to my body, how I catch the water, how I leave it behind, the fluidity of the movement”, says the swimmer.
«In my time there was not a single impediment for girls, it was everything, society itself. Most families did not understand why a girl wanted to play sports, most schools did not encourage it, rather the opposite… everything worked against her. That was my fortune: my family didn’t give me any trouble, at my school they swam and Club Sabadell helped me. I only encountered difficulties after the Games, when I left my environment”, recalls Corominas. As much as memory eludes, in it is the history of sport in the country.