VALENCIA. Spanish athlete Enrique Llopis on Thursday lamented his “eagerness to close and close” the gap on American Daniel Roberts and the rest of his rivals in the 110-metre hurdles final at the Olympic Games, having finished fourth thanks to his time of 13.20 in a race won by fellow American Grant Holloway.
“We’ve fallen a little short of those medals. It’s true that it wasn’t my best race at all. The feeling at the beginning was very bad, I had a little touch there and I couldn’t get out as well as I would have liked. It’s true that I recovered well afterwards, but the desire to cut back and cut back got the better of me, and I didn’t finish running as comfortably as I wanted to,” said Quique Llopis at the end of his race, from the mixed zone at the Stade de France.
“I knew I had to run my best time to be fighting for those medals and that’s what happened. It’s true that the warm-up was my best warm-up, without a doubt. But hey, I don’t have to be unfair to myself. I think we fought until the end, we gave everything and we stayed there one place away from those medals, so we have to be more than happy,” said the sprinter from Gandia to the official media of the Royal Spanish Athletics Federation (RFEA).
Llopis also analysed his performance at the Saint-Denis stadium. “There were no hard hits with the hurdles either. There was one, it’s true, quite strong at the beginning. And well, I think it has weighed me down a lot throughout the race. I recovered quite well compared to Roberts, who was the one I had as a reference. But it wasn’t enough, I needed to finish off that race,” he said.
“The start is not my strong point either. Roberts starts very fast, I knew he was going to get a few metres ahead of me at that start. I had to stay calm there because I knew I could catch up with him at the fast start. But anyway, as I say, I’m very happy, it’s fourth place, so I can’t demand more of myself,” Llopis insisted from Paris.
“Once you’re there, you want to fight for everything, you want to get into those three positions. But well, as I say, I think that now we have to assimilate in these days everything that we have achieved; not only here, but this whole season, which has been crazy, which I didn’t even think I could achieve in my wildest dreams,” he said in this regard.
“I’m like that, always wanting more. I might have gotten bronze and I’d be saying: ‘Wow, I’m stuck there…’. But I think it’s a good thing, you always have to want more, want to keep working and keep fighting,” reflected the athlete from Gandía.
He then said that he prefers “the fourth Olympic without a doubt” to a medal in other competitions where he has also been on the podium. “It is clear that with my time I would have won a medal today. But you have to run it here, there are people who have run it and I have not run it. So that’s it, I just have to congratulate the medal winners, they have earned it, they have run more than me today and that’s it. Now all that remains is to work and come back next year stronger and be closer to those medals,” he concluded.
ÁGUEDA MARQUÉS: “I’M GLAD THAT THE SPANISH 1,500 IS AT ITS PEAK”
Águeda Marqués also spoke to the RFEA. “I don’t know, I was a bit in shock, I just couldn’t believe it. In fact, I arrived and I didn’t even know what time I had done or how I had finished. At one point in the race I didn’t even know how much time I had left to reach the finish line,” the Segovian described her successful semi-final in the women’s 1,500 metres.
“I was just dying and I said: ‘Today I’m going to give it my all, I’m going to die today and I’m going to arrive dead at the finish line’. I didn’t even know what it was or what position I had finished in. I threw myself on the ground, I saw the screen and I said: ‘No? Sixth, I’ve made it to the final’. And I was like: ‘I can’t believe it’. I don’t know what it will mean to other people, but for me it is the dream of my life,” Marqués confessed.
“There are very few opportunities like this and I can’t believe that I have come out and that all the work we have been doing for so long has borne fruit. I am also very happy for my entire team, all the people who have supported me, my family, my coach Arturo Martín Tagarro, who is very patient with me, and my partner Adrián Ben,” stressed the middle-distance runner from Segovia.
“I’m also very surprised. For me it was also a very significant personal challenge because I had never run so many races in a row at this level. My coach prepares these races very well and we work hard at the top, which is what we’re supposed to endure, but you never know and for me it also created a lot of uncertainty,” she said.
She then praised Esther Guerrero from Baños. “I’m angry that she didn’t make it because I know that she’s also fighting hard and I hope we can all be together in the final. But that’s what I’m telling you, it’s very expensive and each of us has to fight for our own place. I also think that she must be very happy because she has also run a lot, we are close to our personal bests,” she stressed.
“Hey, and there’s not much talk about Marta Pérez’s record, eh? Wow, spectacular, I’m so happy for her. I mean, it’s a great time of 3:57 and she has dethroned Natalia [Rodríguez]”I don’t know, it’s just that it’s incredible what we’ve done today; I mean, I’m glad that the Spanish 1,500m is at its peak right now,” Marqués concluded at the RFEA microphone.
