Spain modernizes its swimming with the relay: "We worked like in the 80s, now everything makes sense"
If it can't be one for all, let it at least be all for one. With the decline of Mireia Belmonte, there is a lack of references and the only candidate, Hugo González, struggles among the doubts he left in the last Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. It is possible that Spain will leave again without medals from the Fukuoka Swimming World Cup that begins this Sunday: it has not won one since 2017. For this reason, the Spanish Federation has changed course.
The objective is no longer to lift up a star and give it what it needs, as was done with Belmonte. The plan is to build a middle class of 10, 15 or 20 swimmers capable of qualifying for the important events and, from there, who knows?. To do this, last year he signed the British coach Ben Titley, who had just been technical director in Canada, and set his eyes beyond the horizon: a podium at the Los Angeles 2028 Games is the desired success.
“When Ben arrived he changed the focus. In individual events we are far from the world top and, therefore, his first decision was to promote the relay. Years ago we already saw that we were there to compete in teams and we were not given this opportunity,” explains César Castro, one of the members of the 4×100 freestyle relay to EL MUNDO, who was the only happy team in the last European Championship.. National record and fourth place, a surprise. This Sunday at the World Cup, the dream is to enter the final and compete against the United States, Australia, Italy or Hungary. Qualifying for the 2024 Paris Games seems impossible because they would have to get on the podium, but being close would already be a step forward.
“Young people are far from individual medals, but anything can happen in the relay. We are grateful for the trust and we want to respond,” says Castro, who shares the relief with Sergio de Celis, Luis Domínguez and Mario Mollà. Thanks to the commitment to the teams, Spain has brought 22 swimmers to Fukuoka, a very high number, not seen since the 1986 World Cup in Madrid. In the last three championships, in fact, the team had not reached 10 members.
What else has Titley changed? work differently. Until now, in Spain the philosophy was to put a lot of volume, many kilometers. It was an idea from the 80s. The more you train the better and it really isn't like that. That's why we had good results in World Cups and Junior Europeans, but in the long run we didn't get there, we got injured, there were people who left. Now Ben has adapted the methods to the times, to what is done in other countries. They say that the British technician is a scholar. You have to be in the day to day to see it. How do you plan before training, how do you control the details…. It pushes you to train better than you thought and, at the same time, it quickly adjusts to what we swimmers need.. In Spain we have never had a coach like this. One step away from retiring
Castro is a good example of the sacrifices required by swimming. At the age of 14, he left Plasencia to train as an interim in Cáceres and then moved to Madrid, Gijón and recently to the CAR in Sant Cugat, always looking for the best method.. Long-distance runner as a teenager, a serious shoulder injury forced him to retrain as a sprinter and two years ago he suffered the hardest setback. For a few days he was classified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, but a modification of the selection criteria left him out.
“I lost motivation, I spent weeks without training. With my coach and my psychologist I made the decision to temporarily stop swimming to see if I really wanted to continue swimming. I tried boxing, I even forgot about the water. But then there came a time when I wanted to go back”, says the swimmer who studies Marketing at the UCAM in Murcia and who, at the moment, does not take calls from American universities. Now it is part of the new plan for Spanish swimming. If it cannot be one for all, at least it is all for one.