Francesc Jiménez, a brilliant invention for tennis and the hunter's shot that left him paralyzed
In November 2021, the euphoria: his new company was putting up for sale a great invention, one of those that shakes up the market. How come no one had thought of that before?
In January 2022, the tragedy: an inexplicable shot by a hunter broke two vertebrae and left him in a wheelchair.. Now fight so it doesn't happen to anyone else.
In just three months, the life of Francesc Jiménez changed, for better and for worse. A Eureka! and a shot. Where to start?
“I prefer to talk about the good,” says Jiménez, who attends EL MUNDO at the factory of his brand, Infinite Athletic, in Cabrera, between Barcelona and Mataró. «I am a textile engineer and I have always been interested in the recycling of materials, in fact, before having my own company I worked as R&D director of another. About three years ago I went to a sports store in Barcelona and saw that the tennis racket stringer was throwing away the used strings. It occurred to me to ask him about how he recycled that material and he told me that he did not.. I clicked. The ropes were 100% polyester, they were of the highest quality! It couldn't be that no one was using them. I left that store, went to other nearby ones, asked the same thing and nothing. I called tennis clubs in Spain, Germany, France, the United States…. Nothing! Nobody was recycling those strings. In fact most people were surprised by the question. With that information, three partners got together and started working,” says the businessman who has a treasure.
Araba
With a donated material, the used racket strings, which are sent to him by 35 clubs throughout Spain, 30 stores and tournaments such as Godó, he manufactures and sells tennis shirts, pants and dresses. The first collection, which came out in November 2021, was all black and was relatively successful, but the new color collections are succeeding. «The reception has been very good. Tennis players appreciate the circularity of the material and, furthermore, that the clothing is so light and so resistant. We are working to reach agreements with more stores and even directly with the racket brands to have more strings to deal with,” acknowledges Jiménez, who manages seven employees and has had to adapt his company offices to his new reality.
A shot and a fight
It's time to talk about the bad. «It was in January 2022. One Saturday at noon, I was cycling up a mountain near Mataró, a very frequented mountain, and I had the bad luck of meeting a 72-year-old hunter who had vision problems, a hunter who heard a noise, shot and ran through me. the back. T3 and T4 crossed my mind and since then I have not been able to move from the chest down. It was very hard,” says Jiménez, who in the same hospital was surprised by a fact: the hunting raid that left him paralyzed was perfectly legal.
Araba
“The hunter broke three hunting rules: he did not see the prey, he shot in the direction of a road and he did it upwards because I was 1.82 meters tall and was riding a large 29-inch bicycle. We are awaiting trial, but the case was almost closed because the raid in principle complied with the rules. In an area of 400 hectares they had put up five or six posters and that was enough». «The hunting law that we have in Catalonia is from 1970, when there was hardly any recreational activity in the mountains. Now, on the other hand, on a Saturday at noon there are cyclists, runners, families out for a walk…. Two weeks after my accident there was a beating and a trail race at the same time! ”, he proclaims in search of a change in legislation.
Jiménez has promoted an initiative that will reach Parliament in the coming weeks with several points: that there should be no hunting raids on weekends, that they should be better signposted, that the requirements for granting licenses be tightened and, among other things, that there be an accident record. “Currently none exist and nothing ever seems to happen. But the Civil Guard has recorded 35 dead and 485 injured in hunting raids in Catalonia alone. This same January in the Vall d'Arán a hunter killed a hiker, also on a Saturday. It is unacceptable that such misfortunes continue to occur and that not even a study is being carried out on how to avoid them,” concludes the businessman.