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Suipacha is a city of about 10,000 inhabitants in the interior of the province of Buenos Aires. There, one day in 2016, they asked their mayor for two plane tickets to Mendoza. A boy who had just started running wanted to try to qualify for the U-18 World Athletics Championships in Kenya. He had already tried to qualify for the Buenos Aires Tournaments, but had not been able to. Unexpectedly, he got the tickets, and even more, the qualification for the World Championships. That boy was Elian Larreginawhich is now in the Paris 2024 Olympic Gamesachieving something that only Argentine athletics experienced almost a century ago: it reached a Olympic semifinal on the track at the Stade de France, which will take place on Tuesday, starting at 2:35 p.m. A story that began just eight years ago, when Usain Bolt was dazzling in Rio 2016 and Elian did not want to leave the house.
“Why don’t you take him to train with you a little? Since he stopped playing football, he spends more time indoors than outdoors,” Veronica, Elian’s mother, told Juan Crisimanti, Suipacha’s athletics coach. Juan, who had him as a student in physical education at school, told her in the next class: “Elian, I signed you up for the Bonaerenes Tournaments again. But now we’re going to have to train every Saturday, and also some days during the week.”. This is how Elian Larregina got into athletics and, now yes, he qualified and even won a bronze medal, but in triple jump.
Little Elian Larregina and his childhood in Suipacha
“Elian was a natural talent. First we did other tests to develop his speed, and then we dedicated ourselves fully to the 400 meters,” says Juan Crisimanti from Suipacha. When they asked the mayor for the tickets it was because Elian had seen that the World Cup was in Kenya, and that the last national qualifier was being held in Mendoza. The minimum time was 49.25 seconds. So Crisimanti decided to try it on the grass track in Suipacha. “He ran about 51 seconds, we were very far away,” Juan remembers. But they went, and Elian ran in Mendoza in 49.24 seconds! won the ticket to Kenya by a hundredth.
“I watched the World Championship race live on TV, he was the guy who fell before the finish line,” recalls Leonardo Malgor, a leading long distance athletics coach. “I was watching the World Championships in Nairobi and I said, who is this? A phenomenon, he was first in a World Championships!” In that race, Elian miscalculated his effort and collapsed a metre from the finish line… but he had already shown his talent and dedication.
“Javier Morillas [el actual entrenador de Elian] He has polished it a lot, but he can still improve a lot off the court,” Leo explains. “Adjusting those small differences that separate the very good from the best. Hopefully in the semi-finals he can show the quality he has brought from the cradle,” says Malgor from Mar del Plata. And Morillas joins from Paris to THE NATION: “He will be among the top 24 in the world“No more, no less, everything is possible there.”
The young Elian Larregina, when he was just taking his first steps in athletics
How did he get to that point? First, a little background. At the 1936 Berlin Olympics (yes, the ones where, they say, Adolf Hitler refused to award the winner of the 100 metres because he was black), the Argentine Juan Carlos Anderson managed to reach the semi-final of the 400 metres. In the last 88 years, no one else had managed to do it.
Elian ran his 400m qualifying heat and came in last, far from second to last, almost walking. It seemed like it was all over. But at these Paris Games a new modality was introduced in the regulations: the repechage. All individual races between 200m and 1500m (including hurdles) will have a repechage round. Elian agreed to this stage. And there appeared another Elian.
“Unlike the series, where he was nervous and tense, in the repechage I saw him more relaxed and calm,” says Yair, his brother. There in Suipacha, “we athletes get together and watch it on YouTube.” And for his people in Suipacha, and for the entire French stadium.
Elian Larregina and an incredible definition in the World Cup in Kenya, when he fell centimeters from the goal, after being very close to a historic victory
Everyone was watching the boy with the black cap on the screen with the visor facing backwards. Some even wondered, can you wear a cap in sprint races? Diego Dadin, international athletics judge at World Championships and Pan American Games, explains: “It is not prohibited by regulation. In essence, it is like wearing a headband or wig. If the cap falls off, nothing happens. Now, if it falls off and causes harm to another athlete, a claim can be made.” And he immediately adds: “Although I have never seen it happen.” In fact, another Argentine, Belen Casetta, has been competing with a cap for some time, but with the visor facing forward. And even the great Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce runs with a wig, which did not prevent her from winning 8 Olympic medals in the 100 and 200 meters.
Elian started using it to cover his alopecia, but once the hair loss was resolved, it remained a personal best. So there he was, with his cap, in the repechage, where he stood out with 45.36 seconds, one of his best times, and access to the semi-final. “His performance was superlative, I think he was very clever in analyzing the series, when he saw that he had no chance, he let himself go and saved his strength for the repechage. It was a great success,” analyzes Javier Carriqueo from San Martín de los Andes, who knows something about track, since he was in the Beijing 2008 Games in 1,500 meters, and in London 2012 in 5,000 m. “Javier has done a great job with Larregina and with speed in general, for example with Franco Florio. I think Elian was understanding how to grow as a professional.”
Elián Larregina on the track at the Stade de France, won the repechage and entered the semi-finals of the men’s 400m
The boy from Suipacha has already been in South American, Ibero-American and World Championships, but now Larregina faces the biggest test of his life. He will be part of an Olympic semi-final with the best 24 athletes in the world. “Elian usually has a hard time in the first races of each tournament,” says Javier Morillas, “but once he gets into the rhythm he is very competitive, and when he is confident, like now, everything is possible.”
“He has a strong personality, when he sets his mind to something you can’t move him,” adds Verónica, his mother. “Although I tell him that he is like Roberto Carlos, because he has a million friends and is a very lovable neighborhood boy, he is also very competitive with himself; he doesn’t like to lose at anything, he doesn’t allow himself to.” And he admits that when he told the coach to take him for a run a bit, that was how he left the house: “I didn’t imagine that he would make it to the Olympic Games. But now we are all watching him on TV, and obviously, every time I see him I get excited.”
Conocé The Trust Project
