No Catalan has come this far at the Olympic Games. Rowing upstream, Saúl Craviotto has become the second Spanish athlete to win five different Olympic medals, equaling the milestone of the Galician David Cal, a good friend of his. At the age of 36, this Lleida native has continued to find motivation to prepare for the next Olympic Games, always aspiring more. Up to this silver medal in K4 500. The quartet composed of Saúl Craviotto, Marcus Cooper Walz, Carlos Arévalo and Rodrigo Germade set a time of 1: 22.445, just 226 thousandths of a second behind the Germans Max Rendschmidt, Ronald Rauhe, Tom Liebscher and Max Lemke.
In the final, Craviotto pulled the thorn out of last Thursday’s final at the K1 200, when he finished in seventh place. “It’s hard to withstand the pressure. You prepare for four years and you play everything in less than a minute. And when everyone expects you to win a medal, it’s hard. These days listening to Simone Biles I thought I understood. one end I had my hands full of sweat, my belly nervous. But once you start, it’s time to row hard and let it be what God wants, “he explained.
But in Tokyo, Craviotto also arrived for the first time in the K4500 team, with a four-crew canoe, teaming with Carlos Arévalo, Rodrigo Germade and Marcus Cooper. “It’s a challenge, because I had never been in a big team. But we have been improving, facing the Germans. First they always defeated us, until this May we won the World Cup for the first time. They must be injured,” he explained. , admitting that he exchanges messages with his rivals, because in canoeing, the old glories are friends, after so many years committing. Not even the pandemic stopped him. In fact, during the pandemic he patrolled the streets of Gijón again, to control the curfew, while training at home. “At first I didn’t have permission to go to the sea or the rivers, I was dying for it. I had to set an example,” he recalls.
When you get to the top of a podium, you can’t help but think about your roots. Craviotto always remembers how his passion for canoeing is inherited from his father Manuel. If Barcelona’s Jordi Xammar, a sailing medalist on Wednesday, competes at sea unlike his father, who was a motorcyclist, the Craviotts have finished together. “When I was little my dad would take me down lost rivers. He would tie a rope to my canoe and I would raise my hands, he would let me carry him. He was very lazy.” This laziness did not last long. At the age of 15, he left Lleida to go to the High Performance Center in Madrid.
The Craviotto are a respected lineage in the sport of Lleida. Manuel was proclaimed Spanish canoeing champion in the master’s category for over 65 years ago three years ago, at the Guadalquivir, with his son cheering him on. Linked all his life to Sícoris, a multi-sport entity with a long tradition in Lleida, Manuel Craviotto came to compete with the Spanish national team while taking his son to the rivers and lakes of the Pyrenees every weekend. The best school, since Manuel, who made his debut in a canoe in 1969, is a teacher of this sport at the Escola del Sícoris.
Saul left home at a very young age and despite returning from time to time, he has traveled the world. As in other countries, in order to combine a professional sports career with a sport without so much help with private life, he joined the National Police, which would first send him to Reus when he was 19 and after his Olympic debut to some Games in 2008, in Gijón, ideal setting to continue training. After winning so many medals though, something changed. “Okay. The medals and going out on the reality show Masterchef Celebrity. People recognized me and didn’t take me seriously despite wearing a uniform,” he would explain. So now he works giving his face in campaigns aimed at improving driving, for example. Reality by the way, he won it. Those who knew him explain that Craviotto always wants to win. Now, in private, he admits that he is angry to be better known for winning a cooking competition than for his Olympic record. “In Gijón -where he lives- people stop me to talk about salads, not palates” jokes Craviotto, who sent messages of support to the National Police during the referendum of October 1, 2017 in Catalonia . “I’m a cop and when I leave the sports career this will be my job,” he often says.
Craviotto’s first major success would be the K2 500 gold medal at the 2008 Games pairing with Carlos Pérez Rial. “The Games are magical. Look, you’ve seen your rivals, but you get there and your body reacts. Once you’re there, you want to come back,” he recalls. Four years later, he would win the silver medal in K1 200. Those London Games would also be those in which less than 24 hours of hanging the silver, he would ask his partner, nutritionist Celia Garcia, if he wanted to marry she. Five years ago, in Rio de Janeiro, Craviotto would win gold at K2 200 pairing with Cristian Toro and bronze at K1 200 two days later.
Now he will have to decide whether to try to get to the Paris Games to keep making history. He is three years away and has seriously considered leaving the competition. But every time his coach talks to him about the Games, something trembles inside him, the same emotion he had when “with his father’s Renault 11 they were going to the Pyrenees with the canoe behind him”.
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