2023-09-17 07:03:59
This is the story of a boy who dreamed of being a professional motocross rider and ended up riding a mountain bike. The demonstration that in life sometimes a misfortune can become a blessing. Because David Campos was already competing on the motorcycle at a regional and national level and he had a fall, “one of those silly ones,” as he describes, and broke both collarbones. “I was 15 years old and I started cycling in recovery, to get back into physical shape. It just so happened that my bike broke down, I went to the store here in my town and there was the boy, who is now my mechanic, Manu, and he asked me if I wanted to go out and do a rutilla with them on Sunday,” he reveals. His town is Velez Rubio, in Almería, the eastern gateway to Andalusia, next to Murcia. “I took a stress test to check my heart and they told me that I had very good data for cycling and that I should try it. I liked the environment, my dream was still to be a professional motocross rider, but you start hanging out with the townspeople and I have the competitive gene, they were older and I tried to get to the top before them, or to the bottom… This was in 2015. I started doing some races around the area, you won, you got your prize. The following year I competed at a national level, from there internationally…”, he adds.
This season, which is about to end, has been the first in the elite, and halfway through the next he hopes that the trip will take him to compete in the Paris Olympic Games, although the road ahead is long and the one he has already The journey has not been easy.
David Campos is European Short Track ChampionLa Razón
In 2022, David decided that if he wanted to be a professional runner he had to dedicate himself 100% to it and finished his studies. “The hardest time for me was during high school because I hardly had time for anything. I also went from junior to under 23 and it was one of the hardest changes. I got up, had breakfast, went to school, got a permit to be able to go out. “Eat to digest so you can be training at 3 in the afternoon because it gets dark here at 6. And you came home from training and you had to study and you were exhausted and it started to accumulate,” he describes.
“What I have changed the most is mentally”
To make matters worse, in 2019 he had a fall and was unable to compete for three months and when he returned he could not go at the same pace as before. The change of category plus the injury, everything came together and he “got into it.” Then came 2020 and the pandemic, another break that, at least, served as a take-off point. “2021 was an adaptation because I came from where I came from, I started little by little, and in 2022 I dedicated myself to a thousand times and international results came and I realized that if I continued like this I could become a professional,” he acknowledges.
Being a professional means that the bike has become the center of your existence. In the preseason you can take a little respite in the afternoons after training and go out for a walk, see friends or do other sports such as climbing or paddle tennis, but in season… “My life is 24 hours a day.” day to think about the bike, from the moment I get up until the moment I go to bed. In the concentrations in Sierra Nevada, for example, there are 25 days and you get up, train, eat, physio, dinner, you go to bed and the next day the same thing,” he explains the preparation of his body. He does not neglect that of the mind either: “It is where I have changed the most. In high-performance sport, if you don’t have your head in the right place and when you have to, it can go from going all right to going all wrong in a moment,” she says. What she has worked on most is to understand that not everything is controllable and that many situations can occur. “I like to visualize the race, see what circumstances may arise and keep in mind what to do in each of them so as not to block you, as has happened to me sometimes,” she describes.
Custom bicycle
This first year in the elite he has been proclaimed European champion of Short Track, “a modality that came out 5 or 6 years ago, it is competed on Fridays in the World Cup and it is like a qualifier to see the starting position of the race of the Sunday, it is 20 minutes and it is very spectacular for the viewer.” That title made Orbea, his team, make him a personalized bicycle. Well, actually there are three individualized bicycles that he has.
The first season with the best has been above his expectations and has helped him continue learning. “In under 23 I was used to always being ahead and the complicated thing is that here when you get lost for a second, five or six runners pass you at the same level as you, everyone comes out to bite. And they are two more laps than sub 23. In the end the pace at the head of the race is the same as the sub 23, but they are two more laps and if in sub 23 the race breaks down at the beginning here comes the last lap and you look and there is 10 guys in 20 seconds ahead and 10 in 20 seconds behind. It’s complicated, you can’t relax because they eat you,” he explains. He has been among the top 20 in the ranking all year. Spain has almost guaranteed two places for the Paris Games and now the best are David Valero, who won bronze at the Tokyo 2020 Games, and David Campos.
Podium Scholarship: money and motivation
In this first year as a professional, he has begun to be part of Becas Podium, the initiative led by Telefónica and the COE since 2014 to help young Spanish talents and which is “a very big help.” “When you do the concentrations at altitude it is a good money that you are using. And it’s not just financial, it’s also looking at other fellow scholarship recipients, seeing how they work, how they are meeting their goals, and that helps you continue fighting for yours. Sometimes you can doubt yourself, think that you can’t win a European championship and if you see that others do it you start to say that it is not impossible, that with discipline and work you can achieve it,” says Campos.
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