The modernist enclosure of theHospital de Sant Pau has hosted this Saturday the first post-covid sports race, an act that has served, in return, to raise funds for research against coronavirus. To make the test possible, the Hospital de Sant Pau has adapted its traditional long-distance race to the new health context, which this year reached its 32nd edition. The race was limited to one mile (1,600 meters) and the start of the runners was done in stages and separated by the number of the ridge in order to ensure safety distances. Participation has also been limited to a hundred athletes, who have contributed through their registrations 1,000 euros for research.
The cardiologist Ricard Serra Grima, one of the promoters of the Sant Pau race, now 32 years ago, has explained that the will of the organizers had always been to be able to maintain the test, once the state of alarm was overcome and adapting it to the current “special circumstances “for the coronavirus crisis.
The race, which in its origins would be as a study tool on the influence of sport on heart disease, has had another double goal this year. On the one hand, funds have been raised for research against covid-19 and, on the other, an “experimental model” of care for the new normal is put on the table.
The organization has taken the athletes out in stages, every five seconds, to avoid congestion. Each runner has done six laps on an 800-meter circuit and when establishing the classification, the two best consecutive laps of each have been chosen. “There was no other way to be able to do it,” says Serra Grima.
Among the participants, limited to only a hundred to avoid overcrowding along the circuit, were prominent names such as Reyes Estévez, José Luís Blanco, Carles Castillejo and Anna Bové. The winner, however, was, for only one second over Blanco, the runner Josep Díaz, from Espanyol’s Penya Runners, who completed the mile in five minutes and two seconds.
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