The life and some dreams of Deisy Montes de Oca have taken a remarkable turn since that November 30 of last year, when she became the mother of the twins Enma Sofía and Carlos Gabriel, procreated with the Olympic medalist Gaby Mercedes.
Although she feels blessed because now she has the most important thing she was missing, balancing the roles of mother and athlete has not been easy for the taekwondo champion at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico (2010) and silver four later in the edition of Veracruz, Mexico, among other medals that he accumulates in his illustrious career.
If the task becomes complicated when you have a child, especially when you are months old, you have to imagine what happens with a couple who rarely sleep together.
“When one of the children sleeps, the other is awake. They wake up a lot at dawn”, declares the tall 5’9 athlete from Santiago.
The hours that he used to spend daily training have been reduced from eight to just one or one and a half hours, insufficient to maintain himself in the forefront as an elite athlete.
“Before, I trained from six to eight in the morning, from eleven to one in the afternoon and from six to eight at night,” reports Deisy, who receives help from Gaby Mercedes, when the colonel and deputy director of Communications of the National Police arrives. usually at night home.
Family photo with children and Gabriel Mercedes.
“He gets to watch the NBA with the girl and at dawn he helps me by loading them when they wake up. We take turns ”, he highlights about his partner, who, however, has declined to change their pampers because when cleaning them they run down to the lower part of their back (“it makes a fool”).
“Now, when the sun goes down, I go and train (at the Olympic Center’s pavilion for that discipline), but I have to take them because the female likes the breast a lot,” says the mother and athlete, who had the illusion of participating in the next June, here in front of his family and friends, at the XXIV Central American and Caribbean Games in El Salvador.
(Taekwondo will be one of the seven sports in the regional tournament that will host the Dominican Republic.)
Unfortunately, she did not receive the go-ahead from her gynecologist Miguel Montero, so this time her role will be merely contemplative (“I will go to see my colleagues and several of my friends and rivals from Mexico, Puerto Rico and Costa Rica who are still current”).
With the little time that she now has to train, the possibilities of attending the “Paris 2024” Olympic Games are dissipating in the panorama, the last opportunity for an athlete who, with your pardon, already has 33 years at a cost (most of the women hate that this information is aired in public). That will be one of her broken dreams.
On a day-to-day basis, Deisy also receives help from Carolina, her older sister, and former taekwondo champion in the 62-kilo category, a title won at the “La Romana 2002” National Games.
Carolina, who is now on duty, normally comes for two weeks and when she returns to the Bermúdez expansion, in Santiago, where the family lives, she is relieved by Hilda Silverio, their mother.
Despite the invaluable help she receives from Gaby, her sister and her mother, she admits that on occasions she has thought of throwing in the towel, but she knows that this is not an option.
“Sometimes tears flow. First, because I am the first time and there come times when I want to collapse ”, confesses Deisy, whose first pregnancy was lost at the beginning of 2022, but somehow she was rewarded with two in the next birth.
“I suffered a lot. Now, when those moments of despair arrive, I breathe and say: ́ “If God sent me 2, it is because he understands that I can do it, that I am going to find a way and have the patience to cope with them and be able to raise them well”, he emphasizes.
But far from regretting the enormous task that fate has placed on his shoulders, he feels happy with his twins and for having Gaby Mercedes as a partner, for many the best Olympic athlete born in the country, of whom he was a fan, later teammate and today wife and mother of two of his five children.
Due to the difficulties to reconcile the roles of athlete and mother, the Olympic goals and dreams have been in the background. Her main focus now is to become an exemplary mother, capable of emulating Doña Hilda, a housewife who overcame adversity to, in the company of Marcial Montes de Oca, a tailor and driver, raise the home with dignity.
“Yes, I think that I will be. I have a good reference that is my mother”. The voice cracks and is replaced by streaming tears that confirm the commitment and end the conversation.