BarcelonaThere was too much humidity, that July 31, 1992. A sticky heat, not suitable for a discipline as sacrificial as the 20 kilometer march. Euphoria had already taken over Barcelona after the first days of the Olympic Games. The Dream Team was already doing its thing in Badalona and the first local athletes had started to win medals. And July 31 was the premiere of the athletics events, with the first series of the 100 meters and the final of the 20 km march. With departure to a circuit installed in the Free Zone, before facing the cruel climb to Montjuïc. “There was 90% humidity and almost 30 degrees, it was terrible weather, it didn’t make us optimistic” admits Dani Plaza.
Two Catalans knew they had options to get on the podium, Plaza and Valentí Massana. The march already had enough tradition then, thanks in particular to two marchers from the Prat de Llobregat: Jordi Llopart, who had become the first Spaniard to be an Olympic medalist in an athletics event, with his silver in the 50 km march in Moscow in 1980; and Josep Marín, silver at the 1983 World Championships in the 50 km march and gold at the 1981 European Championships. Before, athletics was a sport intended for foreign athletes who looked like Greek gods, so tall and strong. But Catalan athletics responded with small and thin marchers, with an iron heart. Plaza, in fact, was trained by Llopart, and Valentí Massana by Marín. The rivalry passed from the masters to the disciples. At the age of 26, Plaza had been European runner-up in 1990 in Split and had the memory of the 1991 Tokyo World Championships in mind, when he realized he had been disqualified while celebrating the bronze medal. On the march, the judges closely follow the athletes and if they consider that their technique is not correct, they warn them. On the third warning, they were disqualified. Running is about going as fast as possible without running. In other words, walking fast, with one of the two feet always in contact with the ground, which has led to more than one disqualification that the walkers consider unfair. The difference between happiness and drama is very small, in this sport that is already documented in the 18th century in England. And Plaza didn’t want to end up with a broken heart back home, in Barcelona. “I worked especially on the technique to avoid being disqualified”, he remembers about those days.
The Immaculate Virgin
The irruption of 22-year-old Massana had changed the scene. The walker from Viladecans had finished fifth in the 1991 World Championships and was coming strong, although he didn’t want to make pigeons fly. “A few months ago I dreamed that I won the gold, but it won’t be like that. With this weather, it’s fucked”, he said, shaking off the pressure in the run-up to a strange race, because, since it was so close to the Baix Llobregat, for the marchers it was like competing in their neighborhood. “At times I feel like it’s a local race,” Massana, who was not at all superstitious, said jokingly. “I only carry my good humor on me” he said with a laugh when asked about Plaza’s superstitions. A family heirloom. In fact, the marcher’s father almost missed the final because his mother, a devotee of Mary Immaculate, demanded that he return home to El Prat to see if he had left the candles in front of the godmother too close to the curtains. I was afraid of starting a fire. In the end, the fire was caused by the son, who entered the Olympic stadium alone to win the gold medal. With all his El Prat neighbors cheering him on. “I went from silence to noise. I could feel that whistling in my ears before I finished melting. And when entering the Olympic, the noise was spectacular”, remembers Plaza, who knew that if he reached the final climb first, he had almost won. “Massana was coming from behind, who in a final sprint could still catch me. It took him 10 seconds, which is usually enough, but he didn’t have them all. And suddenly, turning my head, I no longer saw him. I thought he was tired”, he admits.
But no. Plaza took the glory and the first gold medal in Spanish athletics. And Massana, right at the Olympic entrance, when he had the silver medal around his neck, was disqualified. “I was too tired and I didn’t control the technique enough”, he would explain later. A few meters separated glory from disappointment. Face for one, cross for the other. At the door of the Olympic, a judge considered that Massana’s feet had gone too fast, without touching the ground. The walker from Viladecans would pull out the thorn with gold at the 1993 World Championships and an Olympic bronze in the 50 km march at the 1996 Games. And he has continued all his life to be linked to athletics, meeting from time to time with Plaza, who went to live in Torrevella, Alicante, where he went from athletics to politics, until he resigned as sports councilor of the PP when it was known that he had used the City Council’s phone to make calls to erotic lines.
