The Spanish-Dominican takes the silver on the ground after drawing with the Israeli Dolgopyat, who the judges gave the winner due to the difficulty of the exercise
Although they are more valuable, they say that silver medals are lost and bronze medals are won. Going to the podium at the Olympic Games is the glory for any athlete, but that bittersweet feeling, and also unfair, is the one that floated in the Ariake Pavilion in Tokyo after the floor final. By only one tenth, the Spanish Ray Zapata lost the gold medal against the Israeli Artem Dolgopyat, achieving, yes, the silver one by being ahead of the Chinese Xiao Ruoteng.
Even on points with the winner, Zapata brushed the gold with his fingertips, but he escaped in a controversial tiebreaker. With the same score in the execution (8,433) and a penalty of 0.1 for going off the track in one of his jumps, Dolgopyat finished first because the judges rated his difficulty at 6,600 and Zapata’s at 6,500. A decision that caused some surprise and was even claimed by Ray Zapata’s coach, Benjamin Bango, but without success.
From that moment, when he knew it would no longer be gold, until the final ended, Ray lived a roller coaster of emotions. In the time it took for the other four participants to leave, he cried with rage at having lost first place, he got angry with the judges, he feared he would be out of the podium after the performances of the Korean Ryu Sunghyun and the Chinese Xiao Ruoteng and, finally, he decided enjoy the joy of having won a medal. «I knew it was silver, but I was in a loop because I thought it should be first … And then, when I spoke with Alejandro Blanco (president of the Spanish Olympic Committee) and he told me that I had to enjoy this moment, I changed the chip . I already said that I had come for the gold, but that I would not cry if I took a silver or a bronze, “he explained hours later, with a smile from ear to ear, in a press conference by videoconference.
Late gymnast
Ray Zapata, born in the Dominican Republic in 1993 and nationalized Spanish, takes out with this silver the thorn that he had nailed from Rio, when he was on the verge of qualifying for the final. Having bitten off the gold, silver and bronze medals at world and European championships, he has finally savored Olympic glory with a magnificent exercise that could well have given him victory.
Zapata, who arrived as a child from Santo Domingo to Lanzarote, discovered gymnastics very late, when he was already ten years old, twice the age at which one usually starts in this sport. Making up for the technical deficiencies that he dragged with his brute strength and the creativity of his jumps, he has established himself as a great figure in artistic gymnastics after his admired Gervasio Deferr, two-time jumping champion in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 and silver on the ground in Beijing 2008. “I fell in love with artistic gymnastics watching Deferr compete on television and I knew that my dream was to come to the Olympic Games,” Zapata said in the days leading up to the Games. Thanks to Deferr, who bet together with Víctor Cano for his admission to the San Cugat High Performance Center despite the fact that he was already “too old”, his dream has been fulfilled in Tokyo.
Still exultant, Zapata reviewed his performance, in which he was majestic despite not having nailed his first landing. This is how it was seen when, when he finished, he released the tension with a furious cry of satisfaction and melted into a hug with his coach. At that moment he already knew that he was fondling the medals, but he had a lot of suspense ahead of him because there were still six more rivals to compete.
Zapata, who came second after Russian Nikita Nagornyy, preferred not to risk seeing the weak performance of this, who was penalized for several errors and was hesitant. In fact, he chose not to do the ‘Zapata II’, the jump of his creation with which he also obtained silver in the World Championship held in June in Doha.
“I did the ‘Zapata I’ and I think we were right because, although the ‘Zapata II’ was ready, it was very risky for the final. I wanted to secure the gold and I did the ‘Zapata I’, which I nailed it », reasoned the Spanish-Dominican gymnast. In his opinion, “the ‘Zapata II’ requires more precision and more risk and we had doubts in the classification.” For this reason, he decided with his coach to focus on the ‘Zapata I’ because “he is more worked and competitive, with greater options to nail it.” With the objective set on the medals, he revealed the strategy he had conscientiously planned: «Why risk making a ‘Zapata II’ on the plate, which can make me lose a tenth or two by taking a step forward, when we can nail it with the ‘Zapata I’? ».
Danced reggaeton
At the end of the final, with the silver medal already hanging around his neck, he could not contain the tears on the podium. So happy was he that, as promised, he even took a few steps to reggaeton. To continue celebrating, he will pay tribute to Galician octopus and seafood when he returns to Spain, where his wife and daughter, who was born in May and whom he baptized with the name Olympia, are waiting for him. Interestingly, her godmother was her good friend Ana Peleteiro, who also won the bronze medal in the triple jump final.
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