A torrent called Marta Serrano | Sports

Marta Serrano was jumping around in the mixed zone, from where she did not move until she finished seeing on the monitors that her two training partners, Carolina Robles, first, and Irene Sánchez-Escribano, later, suffered the same fate as her in the semifinals of the 3,000m obstacles of the World Cup in Budapest. None made the cut. Neither the rookie, Serrano, nor the brave Sánchez-Escribano, nor the third, Robles, who left the track with a swollen foot after being stomped on by Emma Coburn.

Serrano is only 20 years old and although he did not triumph in Budapest, on another hot and humid afternoon by the river, he is the future of the event in Spain. You can get to know Marta Serrano, a talent in abundance, by watching her run alongside the best in the world (“jo, yes I saw these on TV”, she said), or you can do it by watching her for a while carefully. And then she’ll see a tattoo on her arm that she puts I am mine (I am mine), which was done to remind her that she was a person, especially as a child, who cared too much for others and very little for herself. Her sister Ainhoa, who is also an athlete and lives in Zurich, told her that he needed to think a little more about herself. “And that’s why I tattooed it. I have quite a few tiny tattoos that my sister has done for me.”

Marta Serrano lives in the present and shows her face in a scenario that has been anticipated. At the beginning of the year she looked at the calendar and thought that she had a good summer in store for her. Her last competition was the absolute Spanish Championship, at the end of July. She had all of August ahead of her. Beach, friends, laughter… Life. But just in that last race she was proclaimed champion of Spain. That day, in Torrent, she defeated her two groupmates, Irene Sánchez-Escribano and Carolina Robles, the dominators of the specialty, and made the minimum for the World Cup with a mark that places her as the sixth Spanish of all time in 3,000m obstacles.

His goal this year was the European sub23, where he won a bronze medal that did not fill him. But this 20-year-old girl is so talented, she runs with such ease, she has so much strength, the kick of her spikes thunders after her rivals, that those around her are speechless. “If the circumstances arise and everything goes well, I think Marta can be a nine-minute woman,” explains Antonio Serrano, her father and coach, about a mark that even Marta Domínguez, the national record holder (9m09.39s) could not reach. convicted of doping, and that would allow her to fight for medals in major international competitions.

Marta is the daughter of Antonio Serrano and Natalia Aspiazu, long-distance runners from the 80s and 90s who became international, a broken marriage. He became a coach and she became a scientist and researcher. Antonio wants to exploit the girl’s sporting talent; Natalia, her intelligence. But, of course, who contains a father who has just discovered, at 58, that the most talented athlete ever found was sleeping at home.

The Serrano’s little girl is already out of the World Cup, but she has one consolation: to swell up to see athletics, her passion, her obsession. “I love it. I have been surrounded by athletics all my life. Since I was little, the family trip was to go to the city where my father was with his athletes. I was at the London Games, at the European Games in Barcelona, last year, at the one in Munich. There are times when I also need a bit of disconnection. I am young and I have to disconnect because, as my father is my coach and I live with him, sometimes it is difficult for me. I need to isolate myself a bit.”

Marta lived with her mother, but last year she found that going to the University of Alcalá de Henares, where she was studying Sanitary Biology, made her waste a lot of time. So she left him and enrolled in Occupational Therapy at the Complutense University. As the complete and the CAR are closer to his father’s house, he has moved there, where they spend the day talking about athletics. Marta has an obsessive point. “If it were up to her, even though she is 20 years old, she would dedicate herself to training and resting, and that cannot be. You have to push him to go out to dinner, to meet her friends, to go to the movies… ”. But it’s not just sport. “In her studies, if she can get a nine, she doesn’t get a seven,” says her father. And in training she likes to squeeze. And in the gym, between exercises and exercises, although no one has told her to, she drops to the floor and starts doing sit-ups. “I am a very demanding person and I like to do everything well, but in athletics, studies and in everything. It’s my personality.”