Spanish athletics (or middle-distance, as Jorge González Amo, the pride of a middle-distance runner, points out in love) conquered New York on the first Sunday in February. New Balance rally. World indoor track circuit. Victories of Adel Mechaal, and European record of 3,000m (7m 30.82s), of Esther Guerrero (1,500m) and Mariano García, and Spanish record of 800m (1m 45.12s) and best world record of the little so far this year, and good marks from Marta Pérez in 3,000m (8m 44.40s, the second Spanish in history) and Saúl Ordóñez (3m 55.27s in the mile, the fourth Spanish in all time). Great prospects, such as those on Nevsky Avenue in St. Petersburg, six weeks before the world championships in Belgrade (March 18-20).
Adel Mechaal is moved by love, and very quickly. It is always said by the Spanish athlete whose heart was anchored for a few years in Istanbul, next to the Turkish athlete Emine Hatun Tuna. Overcoming all the bureaucratic and pandemic obstacles that blocked their desire, the couple finally settled in Spain three months ago – a month and a half at the height of Sierra; later, until now, sleeping in an apartment in Navacerrada, 2,000m, and training in Madrid every day–, and both athletes, stajanovistas of the shoe, multiplied running on asphalt, 200-meter synthetic tracks and cross-country mud, and they flew.
Emine Hatun flew in Valencia four days ago, and fell under nine minutes in the 3,000m, and Mechaal flew 10 days ago in Karlsruhe, and two days later in the Spanish cross country championship in Jaén, and he flew even more, supersonic, in New York this Sunday, and he won with sufficiency and class and broke the European record of the same 3,000m, with a mark of 7m 30.82s, and the fans are excited and happy because he clears the head of the list of the best European brands, erases the stain of ignominy that it means for athletics that two Spanish athletes, Sergio Sánchez and Alberto García, were in charge of it, who spent more words in their time (12 and 19 years ago, respectively) to fill in the chronicles of his doping and his lies than those dedicated to his false athletic splendor. And everyone thinks of a new duel at the summit with Mohamed Katir, the athlete from Mula who simultaneously holds the Spanish outdoor records of 1,500m, 3,000m and 5,000m, and who plans to continue his razzia this season on the indoor track.
And even more so is Antonio Serrano, Mechaal’s coach, who proclaims that at last one of his athletes has achieved a record, and not only Spanish but also European, almost 30 years after Rodrigo Gavela’s marathon. “And I was getting a little desperate,” says Serrano, who praises the change in mentality of Mechaal, an athlete with as much class and competitive mentality as mental fragility. “Adel is a great talent who does things in training that I haven’t seen anyone do, but he didn’t finish off on the track,” continues Serrano. “That is why, when I saw him on TV that after the 2.00m, when he was already in the lead without a hare, he continued by himself setting laps of 30s and 29s, the same as he did in training, I already knew that the record was fall. In Karlsruhe he did 7m 37s running by himself, several meters behind the Ethiopian Aregawi, and here, after seeing him 5m 5s behind hares he did 2m 25s in the last thousand, and he still had acceleration”. Mechaal’s next target is the 1,500m from the Birmingham rally. “And if he also gets the minimum for the World Cup, we’ll see in which test he runs, or in both…”, says Serrano.
And the fans are also very happy because Mechaal, just turned 31, was not the only Spanish athlete who triumphed on the indoor track of the Ocean Breeze pavilion in New York, on Staten Island, the island that is reached from Manhattan on the ferry that brushes against the Statue of Liberty or crossing the Verrazzano Bridge, which is so well known by those who compete in the New York marathon. Before the athlete from Palamós, the 2017 European indoor champion, ran and won the 1,500m, the athlete from Banyoles who trains and breathes on the beautiful Olot track (4m 11.87), planted in the shade in the middle of a Forest. And the generosity that she shows in the effort on the track was also exhibited a few minutes later, when she kept her word with her friend Marta Pérez and did the first 1,000 meters of the women’s 3,000m in which the woman from Soriana (sixth) achieved the best mark of his life (8m 44.40s), and the second best Spanish mark ever, four seconds behind another athlete, Marta Domínguez, who, like Sergio Sánchez and Alberto García, was harshly sanctioned for doping.
Between the two athletes, two other brilliant middle-distance boys ran, Mariano García, Murcian from Cuevas de Reyllo, the 800m, and Saúl Ordóñez, Berciano from Ponferrada, the mile. They both ran; more tenuously Ordóñez, who was looking for the minimum for the 1,500m in Belgrade (3m 39s or 3m 55s in the mile) and was 27 hundredths away, his penalty (at the Tokyo Games he was also one hundredths away from the 800m semifinals ), a mark that is not bad at all and that allows him to establish himself as the fourth Spanish in history after the holy trinity of Abascal, Reyes Estévez and González, and ahead of cacho; and more ferociously, like a merciless murderer, Mariano García, the athlete who always pretends to start a motorcycle and laughs happily before leaving and after finishing. And he laughed more than ever in his career, and gave more bouts of joy, because with his splendid acceleration in the last 200m he not only beat some very difficult rivals (Hoppel, Van Dieppen, Langford, Learmonth) but also finished, with a few seconds 400m faster than the first (52.61s + 52.51s), in a magnificent 1m 45.12s, a high level world record and also a new record for Spain on the indoor track, surpassing, by 13 hundredths, the 1m 45.25s of Antonio Miguel Reina 11 years later.
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