2023-11-07 11:26:57
The sound of the elastic canvas is hammering, constant like a metronome. It doesn’t stop. Robert Vilarasau (Artés, 2001) jump non-stop on the trampoline. It rises up to seven or eight meters and begins the acrobatics; fast and elegant, frenetic and precise. He watches the replay on a screen in the training room and laments. A couple of elements didn’t turn out the way he projected in his head. Thursday starts Trampoline Gymnastics World Cup in Birminghamqualifying for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. A patellar tendon injury kept Vilarasau practically unable to train for more than a year. He thought about quitting. He did not do it. Now, reborn, at 22 years old he will seek to fulfill the dream that the injury could not take away from him, to be an Olympic athlete.
Vilarasau was at his best. The double absolute trampoline gymnastics champion of Spain was established nationally, well positioned internationally, and had just achieved one of his great goals, setting a world record. In the CAR of Sant Cugat, his home since he was 14, he got two. At the end of 2021, he managed to chain two quadruple mortals in a grouped position – with his knees close to his chest -, something that no one had done before, and in early 2022 he surpassed himself by chaining a triple quadruple, doing one of the series in tented position – with legs stretched and feet pointed -.
“I lost faith”
The rhythm that the gymnast was doing was very high. The number of items he tried over and over again were out of the ordinary. He participated in the European championship in Rimini and the Spanish championship. And the tendons said enough. Tendinopathy became a nightmare which lasted from September to June of this year. Nine months. “I’ve been through hell,” Vilarasau said honestly, with a lost look. “I would come to the training room and see all the gymnasts jumping and progressing while I did physical preparation and whatever I could. After an hour I just wanted to get out of there,” he explains.
Gaining height is essential to start acrobatics on the elastic mesh. Pushing yourself up requires a lot of leg strength, and your knees end up supporting the weight of your entire body. When Vilarasau thought he had recovered, he jumped again and, by leaning too much on his left knee looking for more height, the tendon asked for a truce again. Another three weeks without being able to climb onto the elastic mesh, and so on and on and on for the nine months. She tried all kinds of treatments on her knee. She visited doctors, specialists and physiotherapists, tried growth factors and hyaluronic acid. Nothing worked. “I lost faith. I thought I would never return to the level I had,” she says.
Start from scratch
“Why is this happening to me? What need do I have to be like this if I’m not enjoying it?” the gymnast asked himself. Life in the CAR became very complicated. “You live here doing one thing, and when this thing doesn’t go well, you have nothing. You only have you,” he explains.
Progressively, he took the measurement of his knee. He had to start again from scratch, learning to jump in her ninth season as a trampoline gymnast. “I still can’t hold all the weight I was holding on my knee. Obviously, I have all the elements in my head, but I had to create them again from scratch,” he says. “This has made me a better gymnast, and little by little I am making progress again, I feel better,” she adds.
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“As much as I was mentally down, I kept going and going and going. My coach, Guillem Vila, has invested a lot in me in these months, and has helped me not abandon ship. In addition, I had the motivation not to give up and to achieve my goal,” he says. In 2020, Vilarasau tried to qualify for the Tokyo Olympic Games. It couldn’t be. Now, at the Birmingham World Cup he will seek, again, to be an Olympic athlete. To earn a place in Paris, you will have to be a finalist. No Spaniard has yet achieved it in this modality, Olympic since Sydney 2000.
The hard moments are behind us. Robert Vilarasau still breaks into a nervous smile when he remembers the bumps he has had to overcome. They have made him a better gymnast. His first teacher, at Gimbe in Manresa, couldn’t believe that that elastic child who couldn’t stand still had never jumped on a trampoline before. In Birmingham, starting on Thursday, Vilarasau will once again compete internationally with the Spanish team after a year and a half without being able to do so. “It’s the World Cup to surprise”he concludes.
#Ive #hell