Txell Mas: biography of the Spanish artistic swimmer
Txell MasNow that Spanish artistic swimming is experiencing a new golden age, Txell Mas is the last link left in the water with the previous stage of success. The Catalan swimmer entered the selection for the unforgettable World Championships in Barcelona 2013 and, with the renewal of the team after the disappointment of Río 2016assumed a position that the departure of Ona Carbonell has reinforced.
Mas started practising this sport at just five years old, following in the footsteps of her older sister. Txell watched her train from the stands of her club in Granollers and soon wanted to be the one to dance in the pool. The Catalan swimmer grew up watching the successes of a Spanish team that she joined at the end of her cycle.
Despite the great results at the 2013 World Championships and the 2014 European Championships, the Spanish artistic swimming team failed to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics. That disappointment marked the end of the road for many members of the team, and left Txell Mas as one of the captains just four years after arriving.
But she accepted the challenge and since then has guided the adaptation of the young women who were joining the team, transmitting the teachings that she once received from legends such as Gemma Mengual, Andrea Fuentes u Ona Carbonellthe last to say goodbye, but also, as she explained in an interview in the newspaper Sport“of the rest of the swimmers who are sometimes not talked about as much, but who are just as important.”
“The girls joined the team when they were sixteen and we stayed. For me it was like I was training with a junior team. But I had to be the captain,” explained Txell Mas in an interview in the Sports world.
Leader by example of a team that, after a decade of searching, found gold in Fukuoka 2023. The rebirth of Spanish artistic swimming coincides first with the arrival of Mayuko Fujiki as a coach; the adaptation to a new scoring system that has turned this discipline upside down; and the maturity of this young group that has grown under Mas’s tutelage.
A decade after that first World Championship, Txell Mas is one of the reasons why the Spanish ‘synchro’ is once again fighting in the elite and facing the 2024 Paris Olympic Games with the chance of returning to the podium for the first time since London 2012.
