The world of sports usually has fantastic stories that never cease to surprise. In this case, the protagonist of the week was the Tucumán Pedro Luis Gomezwho traveled to Spain to participate in the Seville marathon and made history despite several difficulties.
The athlete had to cross the continent without any type of financial help, he had to borrow some shoes from a friend and, even so, he broke his personal record in the discipline. He covered the 42,195 meters in 2h10m39 (managing to lose 2m49) and, in this way, remains fourth in the historical national ranking of the distance.
“In Argentina, except for soccer, the rest of the sports are amateur, so you have to cover your own expenses. Personally, I cannot dedicate myself one hundred percent to the marathon because I have to do other jobs to earn a living,” the athlete introduced in an interview conducted on the television program with LA GACETA Play upon his return to the country.
In the field of athletics, the purchase of special footwear for the discipline is a recurring expense. According to Gómez, ideal shoes for competition cost around $300 and must be renewed after certain kilometers of use.
“It started as a joke, but it ended up being a real situation. I had already spent the money for the trip and to pay for everything I had to do there, so I couldn’t afford to buy the shoes, so a friend was able to help me,” said the man from Tucumán. Then, he explained: “every second counts; and to achieve that performance one has to go with the best. Although I have similar shoes, the idea was to go with something less used so that it can fulfill the function that one needs.”
Even though the shoes were one size too big, Gómez had a historic race and managed to continue adding points for qualification for the Olympic Games. In that sense, with the aim of revalidating last year’s championship, he will travel to the La Pampa marathon to get a little closer to Paris. “The idea is to go out and look for the title and make a good mark to add points in the world ranking,” concluded the athlete from Tucumán.
Other cases in the world
The day Jimmy Connors won a Grand Slam with a borrowed racket
Veteran tennis lovers will remember Wilson’s historic T2000 racquet, the first made from aluminum and which was popularized by the American Jimmy Connors. In the early 80s, given the technological advances in the sport, the brand stopped manufacturing it, but Connors refused to abandon its use.
However, the problem for the American came in one of the finals he played at the US Open during that decade. He reached the final and ran out of rackets to play with, so he had to go to the public to borrow one. “He took the microphone and asked anyone who had a T2000 at home to lend it to him to play in the final. Thousands came. He played and won the final with one of the borrowed rackets. It was unforgettable,” explained the journalist. Guillermo Salatino in his book “The Seventh Game”.
Maradona’s magical boots
On May 23, 1988, the farewell match of Michael Platini, in Nancy-Lorraine, France. Among the multitude of stars who participated in the meeting, two in particular stood out for the warm relationship they had generated: Lothar Matthaus y Diego Maradona. The figures had met only a few hours ago, but it was enough time for them to live a special story.
“It was the first time that Maradona and I really spent time together, for two whole days, we agreed a lot. At lunch, before the game, he told me that he had forgotten his cleats; and I did not hesitate to lend him mine,” he recalled. the German years later.
However, when “10” returned the boots, Matthaus noticed that he had tied them in a different way. He “did not tie them diagonally, but diagonally, skipping one hole, and then diagonally again, skipping another hole. I thought: ‘if Maradona can play with a cord like that, I can do it too.’ And I left them tied like that, but I only used them in the national team and never in training, nor in any Bundesliga match or in any Champions League match, so they lasted longer,” he added about the story.
Finally, the boots reached the final of the 1990 World Cup, where Argentina and Germany faced off. With a few minutes left before the end of the match, the referee awarded a controversial penalty in favor of the Europeans, although surprisingly it was not executed by Matthaus. “In that final the boots were already a little broken. He often played with holes, something like that is hard to imagine today. But in the 35th minute, the sole breaks, gives way. I put on a model I didn’t know; That’s why I didn’t score the penalty in the final, but Brehme did,” concluded the captain of that world champion team.
The “dean” feat in Quito
“And how could I forget that night; “That in Quito I was the National Team,” Atlético Tucumán fans often remember as a chant, regarding that historic day when the “dean” defeated El Nacional for the Copa Libertadores. In that match, the flight of the Tucumán team was delayed several hours more than expected, so the team had to enter the game without doing the pre-competitive warm-up; and without most of its props.
For this reason, the Argentine U-20 team offered to lend clothing and cleats to the delegation, given that they were close to the area. In this way, the players had to face the decisive match with smaller shirts and fair or large boots, but they still managed to prevail in the face of adversity and achieve a historic victory in Ecuador, which placed them in the next round of the Cup.
“It usually happens that sometimes they delay you, they take you on another path. But being on a plane that doesn’t leave, changing to a commercial airline, having the ambassador wait for you at the airport, having him tell you ‘if you want to play you have to go out to the bars’, wearing tight boots, never. We changed in the bus and I didn’t know if the game was being played, there was no signal. “We were hungry and we barely ate a few cereal bars,” he recalls. Leandro Gonzalezwho used the “10” of Ezequiel Barco that night.
