At the end of 2020, once their season is over, Óscar Husillos (current continental 400-meter indoor champion) and his sponsor, Goya Foods, launched the #RetoHusillos. It is about a playful and unexpected conception of the sport, to get out of the comfort zone and give some sauce to the fans. On that occasion, in gratitude for his tireless efforts during the pandemic, he challenged a team of four toilets to go around the Plaza Mayor in Madrid; they in relays, he with no more company than his own legs. The important thing was not the result.
This time, at the end of the Olympic course, He wanted to make things a little more complicated, so he called Manuel Merillas, European and world champion of Skyrunning (modality and ultra respectively) whom mountain racing gourmets define as “authentic animal” and he proposed a fun and exhausting game to him. First, a 400 of those of a lifetime, on a tartan court, going out of tacos. Then verticality. The same distance but on a wild climb in terms of technique and unevennessl (47% mean slope). He let Merillas choose the stage, so the Leonese swept home: the flat at the Hispanic Stadium and, when he had to look at the sky, one of the faces of the Peña el Castro, next to Santa Lucía de Gordón.
There was laughter, quadriceps pain, shortness of breath, healthy bite and satiated curiosity to see one of the best Spanish sprinters of all time (national record holder of 200, 300, 400 and 4 x 400 meters indoors) in a radically opposite modality. whom he chose long ago to earn a living. Who won? Here the video.