Corbalán, before participating yesterday in the presentation of the documentary ‘Shooting for Mirza’. /
Juan Antonio Corbalán Former basketball player
«Gijón has always been a city closely linked to basketball. For those of us who played at that time, he was a kind of ‘sweet tooth’ »
A myth and a legend of the national basketball. Juan Antonio Corbalán (Madrid, 1954) spent a good part of his life playing a sport that became his passion. It was one of the best bases in the history of Spain. A benchmark in Real Madrid, with which he won twelve leagues and three European Cups, his record of success only grew. Also with the Spanish National Team, with which he won a silver medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games and another silver at the Eurobasket a year earlier in France. Now, he is a famous doctor.
-What brings you to Gijón?
-I’m for the film festival. I am the promoter of one of the documentaries that is presented: ‘Shooting for Mirza’.
-How did you become a promoter of this project?
-I wrote a novel many years ago called ‘Conversations with Mirza’. Although it is a pure and simple novel, which has nothing to do with the life of Mirza Delibasic, I placed him as an element of fantastic realism in which the author, or rather the protagonist, somehow spoke with him in the moments of intimacy, when he thought. That novel fell into the hands of César Bea and Gerardo Herrero. They read it and thought that there could be an interesting documentary in which the sports figure that was Mirza, one of the greatest European basketball players, was touched on one side.
-When was it released?
-At the Sarajevo Film Festival three or four months ago and also went through the Albacete and Valladolid Festival. And now he is in Gijón, with the characteristic that Gerardo Herrero is Asturian and the city of Gijón has a special connotation in this sense.
-Now that you have been in Asturias for a few days, what do you think?
-It is a paradise, although those who are here say that it rains a lot. It seems to me that it is wonderful. My wife and I have been many times, regardless of the occasions in which I have been with the national team and with Real Madrid. It is a community with absolutely beautiful cities.
-Do you have any memories for Asturias that you can tell us, as an anecdote?
-Not very relevant things happened to me, but one of the things that I remember when I talk about Asturias is the Covadonga Group. It was a sports club in Gijón with a great tradition in basketball. He was always one of the important ones, the good ones. Here I also remember playing with the Spanish National Team. For me, Gijón has always been a city closely linked to basketball. For those of us who played this sport at that time, he was a kind of ‘sweet tooth’. Every time we came for whatever reason everyone was delighted.
-Focusing more on your career, you have a virtually unmatched track record. What is the key to that success?
-We saw a movie that somehow makes us understand that in life there are almost no keys. That you have to live and pull forward. Sometimes good things and bad things happen. Throughout life you realize that everything is surrounded by a great coincidence and you have the best environment to develop everything that your family transmitted to you.
-And you try to shape life as you can.
-In the end a success or a disappointment is cooked. I don’t want to use the word failure, but I do mean that many of the dreams you could have as a child may not come true. I do not like to be in the line of what I consider stupid optimists: people who say that it is enough that we want something with a lot of passion and a lot of force for it to be fulfilled.
-Is life a box of surprises, as many say?
-You have to fight, with your cards, for everything that you may like, but possibly that is not what you get.
“So that’s what happened to you?”
-The keys were that I had a magnificent family that took care of my education and that my school taught me a lot. Fortunately, I could not explain why, we took a group of children that formed a team, we excelled in basketball, and we became champions of Spain with a school group in a neighborhood of Madrid. That was indeed a miraculous thing and perhaps my greatest success.
-He fulfilled his dream.
-I always say that dreams ran over me. Any wish that occurred to me had already been fulfilled.
-That’s a good thing, isn’t it?
-Yes, but at that time with metabolizing everything that was happening to me, what happened to me on a daily basis, it was beautiful enough to fill the life of any child.
-Did you also have this opinion at the time?
-I had it very precociously because I was a 16-year-old boy who had just turned 16 who was already invited to play basketball for Real Madrid and at 17 … To the Senior National Team. It is that that cannot be something foreign no matter how young you are. But logically I have been elaborating the speech. That is why I say that my dreams passed over me, they ran me over.
-He is a famous doctor, but does this profession fill him as much as basketball?
-They are different dishes. The most forceful was given to me young because having the sporting experience that I have never had as a doctor, I could never be one of the best in the world. You have to be humble to understand that any activity or personal development can do a lot for others without having to be the best in the world. I have lived a life that has been a meal served backwards. But I am delighted. I do not miss the success I had, for me every day is a success based on the ability you have to give things to others.
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