The Barcelonan swimmer led the way after winning two silvers in Tel Aviv 1968. A rebel pioneer who retired at the age of 21 after rejecting a medal at the 1972 Heidelberg Games.
Jesús Ortiz / dxtadaptado.com
Tel Aviv, 1968. A militarized city with a post-war air. Armored vehicles and troops of soldiers patrolled its streets. Just a year earlier the Israeli army had toppled the Arab coalition between Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the Six Day War. In celebration of the 20th anniversary of its independence, Israel offered to host the Paralympic Games, after Mexico withdrew from its organization. It was the third edition of the so-called Olympics for the Disabled, sponsored by the German doctor Ludwig Guttmann, baptized in Rome by Pope John XXIII as the ‘Coubertin of the disabled’.
Carmen Riu, first Spanish medalist in some Games.
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It was the first time that Spain sent a delegation to the Games, led by Guillermo Cabezas, one of the promoters of adapted sport. The Spanish team, from the National Association of Civil Invalids (ANIC), was made up of nine men and two women. One of them was 17-year-old Carmen Riu Pascual, who was not aware of the feat she had signed in the Holy Land. With two silver medals, the Barcelona swimmer wrote the first chapter in the history of Spain in the Paralympic Games. An achievement that went unnoticed due to society’s ignorance.
“Woman and disabled, we were useless for the people. They treated us differently, they saw us as freaks. The identity card already marked us, in our profession it put invalid. We were worth nothing to society, they looked at us as if we were going to infect them. It was very difficult for us, we had to overcome many barriers ”, laments the Barcelona woman, a victim of poliomyelitis since she was seven years old, an epidemic that affected the Spanish child population between 1950 and 1964, the year in which the Franco regime began to give the vaccine even though it was invented a decade earlier.
Carmen Riu had affected legs and traveled in a wheelchair. The doctors recommended swimming as a means of rehabilitation to his parents. “We spent summers on the beach in Castelldefels and they made me swim seven kilometers a day. And in winter they would take me to the swimming pool of the Club Natació Catalunya, where they had to pay a monitor for an hour because being disabled they would not let me swim with the other children. I was like that for eight years ”, he says. Later he was part of the sports club founded by ANIC (later Instituto Guttmann) and trained in a municipal swimming pool on Saturdays.
Carmen Riu, left, with the Spanish team at the Tel Aviv 68 parade.
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“They left us the small children’s pool and turned off the lights so that no one would notice we were there training. One day they asked me if I wanted to go to the Israel Games, I didn’t know what they were, but I wanted to live the experience, ”he says. With hardly any preparation, facilities, material or financial aid, Carmen and her companions landed in Tel Aviv full of illusion. “They did not prepare or mentalize us for this event, they took us for testing. I had no idea what my marks were, so I just thought about not finishing last in the competition, ”she confesses.
In a military barracks
Separated by sex, the athletes were staying in a military barracks. “We slept together girls from some countries in large tents,” says Carmen, who fondly remembers the opening ceremony at the University Stadium in Jerusalem before 10,000 spectators. “We rehearsed the parade marking the pace with the wheelchair, it was very exciting, they made a great show, the Hebrews wanted to look good and show that they were civilized people. We were in uniforms, we in a skirt and the boys in gray pants and a dark blue jacket. I still have my clothes, ”he says.
After a few days of training, he had to compete. “No one from the team accompanied Rita Granada and me. An army truck took us to the swimming pool and the soldiers, as we did not know English, told us through signs which test we had to swim, ”he emphasizes. In the first test he won a silver in 50 meters breaststroke and a few hours later another metal of the same color in 50 freestyle: “Electronic markers were not used, it was with a manual stopwatch and they beat me by four tenths”.
One of the 1968 Tel Aviv silvers owned by Carmen Riu.
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After getting on the podium, he kept the medals, he was ashamed to wear them hanging. “When we met with the rest of the team, Mr. Cabezas – president of the recently created Spanish Federation of Sports for the Disabled (FEDM) – did not believe that he had won two medals, he told me to take them out and show them to us. Photos. In the following days Miguel Carol also won a silver and a bronze ”, he adds. Once their participation ended, Carmen and Rita visited cities such as Jerusalem, Haifa or Bethlehem, guided by a military man.
“He was a Sephardic lieutenant, he spoke old Spanish and he acted as our guide. There were many soldiers in the streets and I remember that the alarms kept going off to do drills and know how to hide in shelters in case of bombing. It was very common for Arabs and Israelis to point their guns at each other, but being so young, we were very unaware of what was happening. Until one day we get a good scare. We were going for a walk and several Arabs in a truck began to argue with our guide, they wanted to exchange us both for a cow, ”he says with a laugh.
A short-lived career as a swimmer
In the following years, she shone in the Spanish championships and won several silver medals at the International Games in Stoke Mandeville (Great Britain) and at the Saint-Etienne World Cup (France), but her career as a swimmer was short-lived. He left it after playing his second Paralympic Games, in Heidelberg 1972 (Germany), an event that should have been held in Munich, but the organization sold the apartments in the Olympic Village and the event moved more than 250 kilometers. A fact that the Spanish pioneer did not like at all.
The Spanish swimmer shows the medals she won in Israel.
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“I won silver in 50 backstroke, but I didn’t want the medal and when they were going to give it to me I threw it on the ground as a protest, that’s why it doesn’t appear in the statistics, they tried to cover it up. At the age of 21 I retired from competition. The treatment they gave us compared to the Olympians did not seem good to me, we competed in different facilities ”, he confesses. That volcanic personality and fighting spirit have been his weapons to knock down obstacles in his 68 years. “Sport helped me see life differently, I showed that I was worth something. I could have won more medals, but I don’t regret it, I’ve done other important things, like starting a family, ”he clarifies.
For 30 years she worked as a teacher of psychopedagogy, was the representative of Catalan women at the United Nations and a member of the Council of Europe on Women and Disability. Since 2003, she has presided over the Dones No Estàndards Association, in which they work for job placement and for the eradication of gender violence against women with disabilities. “They have put a lot of barriers on us and I have always tried to do justice for our dignity. To survive I had to put the points on the i’s, I decided to rebel against my destiny, otherwise, they would have continued treating me like trash ”, adds Carmen Riu Pascual, the first Spanish medalist in the Paralympic Games.
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