(ATR) From the hotel to the gym and from the gym to the hotel. There is no room for any other distraction. The Spanish Olympic multi-medalist Lydia Valentín counts the hours until she is behind the barbell in Cali.
"For her, being here is very important," says the president of the Spanish Weightlifting Federation and president of the Ibero-American Federation, Constantino Iglesias, from the Colombian city.
An unforeseen gastroenteritis preventedValentín from traveling to Moscow for the recent European championships, so she crossed the Atlantic to look for the necessary points in the Qualifying Open for the Tokyo Olympic Games that takes place alongside the South American and Ibero-American championships.
Valentínand the Iranian Sohrab Moradi are the only Olympic champions competing this week in Cali, the capital of the Valle del Cauca department. The city is striving to get ahead of the pandemic and the social crisis within the country. It was decided on Wednesday that the I Junior Pan American Games, scheduled for September 9-19 in Cali, will now be held from November 25-December 5 to give Colombia and the rest of the region more time to complete the vaccination process.
Moradi won the 94 kg gold medal at the 2016 Olympics and could guarantee a place for Tokyo if he manages to lift 388 kg.
Valentínhas participated in three Olympic Games with a gold medal at London 2012, a silver medal at Beijing 2008 and a bronze medal at Rio de Janeiro 2016. In the Beijing Games she had been in fifth place and in London in fourth place but the doping by medal winners in each of those Games, detected after further analysis eight and four years later, promoted her to Olympic runner-up in 2008 and Olympic champion in 2012.
The Spaniard, world champion in 2017 and 2018 and four-time champion of Europe between 2014 and 2018, will compete on Friday in search of her Olympic classification and will do so at a higher weight to gain as many points as possible.
She normally competes in the under 76 kg category but now she will do it in the 87 kg.
Iglesias hopes to see Lydia Valentín in her fourth Olympic Games and is also confident in the success of these international tournaments in Cali organized by the Colombian Federation and local authorities, with the endorsement of the Pan American Federation, despite the situation in Colombia.
"You have to be very careful, we have the pandemic all over the world, but all the regulations are being applied, and at the moment the event is going very well," he said.
"Until now we are developing in an atmosphere of tranquility."
Homepage photo: Wikipedia
Written and reported by Miguel Hernandez
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