The Gasols hit it again in Girona | Catalonia

Going against the current and against the established canons, at 37 years old Marc Gasol has become a unique athlete, capable of exchanging the Lakers for Bàsquet Girona, the NBA for the Spanish second division, founding a club, assuming the presidency and leading his team, in his double capacity as a player, to the highest category of Spanish basketball, the ACB League. His unique feat is unprecedented, in tune with his way of being, his character and his scale of values. There is no better summary than the message on the shirts worn by the players to celebrate promotion: We asked for it, and the one followed by the campaign to recruit new members: We want to keep pushing it.

The Barcelona athlete has devoted himself to returning to Girona what he sees as a crucial opportunity for the takeoff of his professional career, when they bet on him and he was able to compete in the team and in the most suitable environment. It was in 2006, he was 20 years old and he had asked Barça to allow him to leave the Barça club because the coach, Dusko Ivanovic, hardly had him. “It was very hard to leave Barça, but in Girona I discovered a new world. It was the spring after winter. I got rid of the thorn and maintained a great communion with the team and with the club”, he said shortly after signing. Months earlier he had broken into the elite by winning the World Cup with the Spanish team, in which he had entered at the last moment, due to the injury of a teammate.

Despite his emergence with the national team, he was then at a crossroads, with many doubts hovering over his career. He decided to play for Akasvayu, the name of the real estate sponsor that was driving the team from Girona at the time. He triumphed in sports and his life also took a new direction personally because it was in Girona where he met Cristina Blesa, with whom he married in 2013 and with whom he has two children.

Already then, the Barcelona center said that his dream was to one day show his gratitude to Girona. After a formidable career in the NBA and in the Spanish national team, he has kept his word beyond what anyone could suspect. Coinciding with his departure to the Memphis Grizziles, basketball in Girona plunged into a deep crisis. The Akasvayu was dissolved in 2008 due to financial problems. The club recovered the name of Sant Josep with which it was founded in 1962, but moving from the highest category to the LEB Plata, the third division. In April 2013, it was disbanded due to debts and lack of sponsors. Marc founded the new club in 2014, presides over it and at the same time became, since last December, the player who led the team from 15th position in the League to the highest category.

In a city that barely exceeds 100,000 inhabitants, elite sport is buzzing after the happy coincidence of promotion, on the same day, a memorable June 19, of the soccer and basketball teams. They join in the highest categories the powerful UniGirona of women’s basketball and the Girona Club Hoquei.

The social mass of Bàsquet Girona has gone from about 1,500 to more than 4,000 subscribers after the arrival of Marc

The social mass of the basketball team has multiplied, it has gone from about 1,500 to more than 4,000 subscribers. Marc has been deeply involved for years in the search for economic and social support, met with businessmen and politicians, and created a structure in which he placed his brother Pau as vice president and in which his younger brother also works. he Adria. “One of the references I have is Manresa, above all because of the feeling of community that Manresa city generates, how they identify with that project. I like the feeling it conveys, obviously with my and Pau’s personal contribution, and our vision of the sport based on our experience. We see the desire that people have, how they push us to improve. He is a very lively model, which is constantly evolving, ”Marc pointed out to EL PAIS back in December when he decided to return to the courts.

Marc’s project in Girona began eight years ago with five teams; At this time it has more than 20, from children’s to the ACB, in addition to 3×3 and wheelchair basketball. Now, in addition to resolving the ACB regulations that prevent the position of president or manager from being made compatible with that of a player, Bàsquet Girona is looking for a sponsor and the guarantees to face a budget of more than 2.5 million euros, after having paid the so-called “participation value” required by the ACB and which amounts to about 480,000 euros. Marc has signed Aíto García Reneses as coach for the next season, who returns to activity at the age of 75, and has hired half a dozen experienced and proven players, attracted by a club captained by the Gasols.

Shortly before Marc founded Bàsquet Girona, in 2013 and together with his brother Pau, he launched the Gasol Foundation, which they both preside over and has its European headquarters in Sant Boi de Llobregat, the city where they lived for many years. The foundation’s mission is to prevent and reduce childhood obesity and promote healthy lifestyles.

Pau turned 42 on July 6 and retired in 2021 after winning the League with Barça and competing with the Spanish team in Tokyo for his fifth Olympic Games. The eldest of the Gasol brothers has been a UNICEF ambassador since 2003, he received the Creu de Sant Jordi in June and was elected as a member of the International Olympic Committee’s Sports Commission in 2021. He lives between the United States and Spain. His wife is Catherine McDonnell, a financial and public relations Californian. They were married at the beginning of July 2019 in San Francisco and a month later, again, in the Castell de l’Empordà, in Girona. In September 2020, his daughter Elisabet Gianna was born, in tribute to one of the daughters of his friend Kobe Bryant, who died along with the legendary basketball player in a helicopter accident in January of that year. Last month they announced that they are expecting their second child.

Marc’s rough beginnings

Marc’s first steps as a professional were not easy. He demonstrated his willpower as a teenager. He weighed 140 kilos and was able to lose 30 kilos in just a few months. Many mocked his physiognomy and nicknamed him The Big Burrito or The Tank. She completely changed her diet and her habits to make her dreams possible. When he had already triumphed with Akasvayu Girona, on June 28, 2007, the Lakers chose him in a discreet 48th place in the draft and they limited themselves to offering him a sweatshirt to participate in some training. “At first no one wanted me. They never told me about going there and being part of the team, ”she lamented in her day. Ignored then, he came to the Lakers many later, when he was 35, and had an outstanding career, NBA champion with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, three-time All Star and Best Defender of the competition in 2013, in addition to being a two-time world champion. , another two from Europe and two silver medals with the Spanish team.

He is a person committed to his ideals, to the point of boldly contravening all the codes that athletes with multimillion-dollar contracts like him must comply with. He did not hesitate to launch from the Astral ship in July 2018 to rescue a Cameroonian woman abandoned to her fate in Mediterranean waters after one of the daily shipwrecks of migrants who risk their lives to flee war and misery in their countries. .

Marc found his own path despite the shadow his brother Pau inevitably cast.

Throughout his career he knew how to find his own path despite the gigantic shadow that his brother Pau inevitably cast over him, four and a half years older than him and one of the greatest figures in the history of Spanish sport and an outstanding figure in the world basketball. Marc never wanted to compare himself to Pau, but as he had done since he was a child when he challenged him at the baskets in the courtyard of the Sagrada Familia school in Barcelona or later in the different teams they have faced or when they coincided in the national team. He never had the slightest complex and so he traveled an exceptional path, symbolized by the historic photograph of the initial jump that the two brothers starred in as members of the starting quintet of the All Star held in New York in 2015. Much earlier, as a kid, he had to go live in Memphis with his whole family to accompany Pau’s first steps in the NBA. Marc played there at Lausanne Collegiate School for two seasons. He was the best scorer and rebounder, he was named Mr. Basketball, the highest award of the Tennessee institutes. But, at the age of 18, he made a crucial decision. He turned down offers from various universities, left his family in Memphis, and returned to polish his game with Barcelona’s second team in the EBA League.

In Memphis he left two indelible marks. The first was at that stage in high school. “He’s that kind of role model that you want for your kids. He is not only a great athlete, he is a great person, ”said Brenda Robinette, the dean of Lausanne Collegiate who honored Marc in 2008 by retiring the jersey with his team number. The second recognition is the one that NBA teams reserve for a select few. The Memphis Grizzlies announced in February 2019 that they would retire his No. 33 jersey in recognition of the 11 seasons he played there, where he brought “blood, sweat and dedication to the Grizzlies and to Memphis; heart and passion for the game and helped shape the identity of the franchise on and off the pitch”, in the words of Robert Pera, owner of the club. The Lakers will also retire the number 16 jersey in tribute to Pau Gasol, who twice won the NBA title with the Los Angeles team. Both triumphed in the NBA and with the Spanish team. Now, together from the offices and Marc also from the pitch, they carry out a successful club management model both in its educational and social aspects as well as in the elite one. The Gasols hit it again.

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