“We will have done 15 or 20 training sessions together, very few, so this gives us a rush to want more.” Maria Corbera pick up the phone “busted” already in the hotel in Szeged (Hungary), where the World Cup ends tomorrow. By “this” he refers to the gold in C1 200 achieved on Friday and today’s silver in C2 500, a modality that will be Olympic in Paris 2024in which they have only seen the current champions, the Chinese Shixiao Xu and Mengyua Sun, who they hugged. The two medals achieved together with Antía Jácome, who was also bronze on Friday in the C1 200 (María finished sixth). A union that has taken time to crystallize but that promises.
Corbera, a 31-year-old from Madrid, trains in Aranjuez under the orders of Jesús Cobos. Jácome, a 23-year-old from Pontevedra, at Kiko Martín’s in Mallorca, after the Seville group broke up with which she managed to be fifth in C1 200 in Tokyo 2020. Romanian coach Marcel Glavan left by surprise after the Games. “It was very hard,” she recalls from Hungary. Last summer, almost without shoveling together and as a test, they achieved silver in the European C2 200. By the end of the year, they decided they shouldn’t stop. “We were convinced for a long time, but There was no bet on letting us compete individually and in pairs at the same time. This year they have allowed us and we have shown that this C2 is moving forward. We will be at the European Games and the World Cups in the summer, where the goal is to qualify for Paris. If we put the C2, we can also compete in the Games in C1 200″says Corbera.
The two sought their lives to train, with six mini concentrations in which they accumulated “15 or 20 training sessions”. “Now we are clear that we must get together and we will see how we do it so as not to force anything, so that harmony and a good atmosphere continue,” explains the woman from Madrid. In principle, they will alternate weeks in Mallorca and Aranjuez.
Corbera, an all-rounder who can paddle 200 as well as 5,000, He came from the kayak and was about to throw in the towel due to mental exhaustion. He switched to canoeing and now he has found the motivation to debut at the Games and with medal options. It is the turbine that is driving Jácome in the 500, where he suffers the most. “In the final, I began to increase my strength to 150 meters when we had planned it in 100, so Antía began to say that it was not coming. But this is all mental. She is educating herself in the 500 and we have time until the World Cup and the Games, ”María laughs.
“It is a distance that chokes me. But I have taken a very big leap because I have psyched myself up to suffer because I want to be an Olympic champion with this C2 ″, she corroborates and warns the Galician. Paris is the goal.
GOLD OF ISABEL CONTRERAS
On Saturday, in addition to the silver from Corbera and Jácome in the C2 500, Isabel Contreras took gold in the K1 500. The K2 500 of Saúl Craviotto and Carlos Arévalo and that of Marcus Cooper and Rodrigo Germade were relegated to the C final. On Friday they had been silver in the K4 500.