More than forty years after lifting the curtain and founding the Salt Gimnàstic Club, Montse Hugas has decided that enough is enough. He has made it a point to travel and suffer with his “family” from the club with whom he has lived and collected a pile of joys. Now, it’s time to step aside and take it in a different way. He retires. He won’t completely disassociate himself from it, he lives it too much, but he will live it more calmly, enjoying it just as much or more. The relay is ready and it will be the Frenchman Eric Boucharin. Of Olympic gymnasts, after the success of Tokyo, she is convinced that there will be more.
It has been 43 years at the foot of the canyon at the club. What will you do from next Thursday?
I have often not been able to follow the competitions of our athletes because I had to stay and I will take the opportunity to tie World Cups, Europeans, visit countries and support our children. I also intend, if I am admitted, to join the board to lend a helping hand in whatever is needed. I want to go to the United States to see Marina González and Jana Guardiola and the girls from the Salt GC family. Getting to know more people also outside the scope of the pavilion.
In other words, he will not leave the club one hundred percent.
At least not at first. A new technical director of great quality will come and I am very calm.
Has it been difficult to find the person who can take over?
There are very prepared people in the club. We have many coaches who have been gymnasts. Now Clàudia Vila has been signed by the Federation and it is a great satisfaction. We wanted someone who was very knowledgeable and who was also an exceptional technician and person. No one in the house wanted to do it because it is a task that they assume is above the trainers and here they are all colleagues. I thought it would be good to bring someone who trained while continuing with the competition teams to lead them to excellence. It was clear that he had to be a director and it will be Eric Boucharin, who was the Catalan coach for ten years and has worked in the French federation. Reasoning with him I saw that it was ideal and I thought it was time to fold. You need new wisdom after a lot of stretching. I will now enjoy and support from elsewhere.
Few people are lucky or privileged to be able to work their whole life doing what they love most.
It’s been what I’ve always wanted to do, yes. However, there have also been times when I would have turned everything on to fry asparagus because there are moments when it costs. I have been lucky to be surrounded by people who have lived the same passion. I’m a very passionate person and I’ve always really liked meeting people and trying to connect with those who knew about them in order to learn from them. When there is learning and high goals, the years fly by. Gymnastics is an endurance race because those who want to run as children do not make it. When you make your hobby your job is a privilege. It happens that you get older, there is also health and everything helps to think that I would have liked to be young forever…
I’ve been told that she didn’t try gymnastics much as a child. When did you fall in love with it?
I wasn’t doing much. I failed gymnastics at school when I was 10 or 11. Then, I told my father to take me to the Sant Narcís gym with Pepe Porras and Roser because I wanted to show the school teachers that if they taught me, I could learn. I got a little bit of it, because I’ve never been into elastic, and that’s where I fell in love with it. I was very shy and gymnastics gave me the confidence to jump over barriers. That’s what I’ve tried to get all my gymnasts to have and they still send me messages reminding me, that whatever they want, they have to work hard to achieve.
If he had been told when he founded the club in 1977 that it would last for over 40 years and be so successful, would he have believed it?
I opened the gym with tremendous excitement. I just wanted to do well-done gymnastics, like what I saw on TV. Not because we did it wrong, but seeing Nadia Comaneci and what we did was like an egg and a chestnut. There have been times when I said, ‘at forty I quit’ but the years went by, the new Pavilion arrived, Clàudia went to Madrid, Rotterdam came… and I felt the responsibility to stay .
Have the Tokyo Olympics been the club’s peak moment?
It is a moment that is always expected. All the stars have to align. In London 2012, the team did not qualify due to changes in regulations and Clàudia could not go. It was a hard blow because we saw each other there. On top of that, she was injured and couldn’t do anything in qualifying. In Tokyo it was very difficult because with Covid there were only four places. We had three options with Nora Fernández, who was injured, and Laura Bechdejú and Marina González. Then there were injuries and they were there. For the Gymnastic Vault it was glorious, but I also keep other achievements like going to a Spanish Club Championship with these girls and taking all the gold possible and leaving only one medal. This rarely happens.
Apart from the results, there must have been other kinds of satisfactions during his career?
It’s also very important to me every day that a little girl walks in the door and wants to do gymnastics. The excitement they bring is what has kept me going.
In this sense, is Laia Masferrer now one of the gymnasts to follow?
Yes, Laia is one of them. I always tell her and all of them that the worst day they have in training will be the closest to a major competition. If they overcome a bad day of training, when they are in a level test, they will think about that day that they overcome and they will be stronger. Another message I give them is to always cling to the opportunities that come their way. Laia had just done Copes Catalanes and was completely new to big competitions. There were two injuries and he was able to participate in the World Cup and responded with a great performance.
How important is the mental factor in gymnastics?
To me it’s like a strategy game. Today you can leave the pieces in one way and tomorrow find them in another, because a thousand things can have happened in a day. In gymnastics you have to be humble and be very prepared for failure. A failure that should not throw in the towel but turn the situation upside down to make things work out for you. This helps a lot in life and proof of this is that all the gymnasts have done very well. Gymnastics is about jumping over barriers and trusting yourself. When you do, you can eat the world.
Will we see more Vault gymnasts at the Olympics?
Yes. I am convinced of it. We have great gymnasts and with this coach, who is a technical trainer, he is already thinking about how to make the club more international. We will live some very good years and then, what I have asked of him, is to train the next coach, who will have to be from the house.
