SUBSCRIBERS EXCLUSIVE
He came to tennis at 45 and since then he has never left it. He came to be fourth in the world ranking of his category and in September he plans to play a +90 tournament in Mallorca for his children to see.
The heat wave does not give respite and doing any activity in the open air weighs like a sentence. It’s five in the afternoon, the thermometer reads 33° and the sun has been stubborn, for a long time, not to breathe. In it Club Atlético Comercio, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Núñez, a group of adolescents between the ages of 15 and 20 train against the fronton that is passing the tennis courts. The young people, logically overwhelmed, stop to hydrate. But the noise of the racket hitting the ball does not stop resonating. Alone against the fronton, a man unleashes his drive with the wall as an implacable opponent. The yellow plush ball always comes back. AND Cristoforo Jesus PazFocused and with his 93 years in tow, he keeps up. “I needed to loosen up”tells Clarion before recounting his incredible life story.
The first question, the one of the million, happens to know how do you keep playing tennis. It’s not for everyone, of course. And Paz, with a calm and patient tone of voice, reveals that many people who see him on the brick dust are amazed by his vitality and insistently ask him what his recipe is. But he has no answers.”Two by three they tell me: ‘How do you do?’ It’s something that comes from inside. I don’t care about anything, not at all. I think it’s because of the Indian blood.”he boasts with a smile while enjoying a cortado coffee with Estela, his wife.
Paz grew up in an atmosphere of absolute humility in a town near the capital of Santiago del Estero. He lived in a small house with his parents and his eight siblings with whom he worked from a very young age in different rural activities. They were loggers, made charcoal and also cared for animals. And he insists that his vitality and the possibility of continuing to enjoy tennis as a protagonist may have to do with his ancestry. “What happens is that I am the son of an aborigine. My father was raised by the Chiriguanos (N. de la R. also known as Ava Guaraníes, who lived for a long time in the north of Argentine territory).”
At the age of 20 he arrived in Buenos Aires and there he began a new life. He first worked in an oil company and later joined Gas del Estado. Soccer, as happens in most, was his favorite sport. However, it was only at the age of 45, at the invitation of some colleagues in the office, that he got to know tennis. AND never left him again.
In this sense, he acknowledges that over the years he began to have a little more of a healthy conscience. “Now we have taken care of ourselves for a while. But when we were young we ate normally. Perhaps now after the nutritional change, more than we are older, we begin to not eat as much meat, more fruit, more vegetables… Eat normally. Although Saturdays are together with the boys and they all eat more than necessary”, Estela challenges him before the complicit look of her partner. They have two children -Marcelo, a lawyer, and Patricia, a university professor- who currently live in the United States.
In recent years, yes, Paz loosened up a bit with the pace he had when he was 80-odd. “Lately, I only play in the morning on weekends. Before, I played in the morning, in the afternoon, at any time. I could play two or three times in the morning when someone was missing. I didn’t get tired”he confesses without showing traces of having spent a long time hitting the ball hard against the pediment under the sun and with his particular racket -it has a different ring and that allows him to have more power-.
Estela knows what tennis means in the life of Jesus and is aware of what it generates in his state of mind.“He found tennis what makes him happy, because today is what keeps you connected, in addition to his family. With tennis he has something that is only his. So much so that at the age of 93 he is hooked on life. He loves coming to the club.”says the woman, a 77-year-old retiree who worked as a coordinator in expressive gymnastics and yoga.
And Paz nods: “My family knows that in tennis I can do everything that I cannot do in everyday life. Besides, there are many people who love me, who help me and feel respect. I respect them all and more than anything my opponents. It is important to have respect for them even if it is superior. You don’t have to get angry. Tennis gives me all the happiness. Outside the pitch I can do things but I go on the pitch and I feel complete.”.
Eye. Sport is not a simple hobby. Paz is also a great player, a competitor who participates in the Senior Circuit of the Argentine Tennis Association and is also encouraged to try his luck in tournaments abroad. In 2020, At the age of 90, he reached his best position in the International Tennis Federation ranking. He was fourth in his category. Currently, he is in 22nd place among the +90, although he has practically no rivals. “Now I play with those of 85 because there are no more of 90”he laments.
With the same rhythm with which he rallied before the interview, Paz shares some of his concerns. The thing is in recent months he began to feel his first pains and a little fatigue in the body. He says it is the product of a natural loss of muscle mass. Maybe it’s one of the many collateral damage from the damn pandemic. It is that the coronavirus also distanced him from the possibility of traveling and seeing his children more often. “I’m not one to get injured. Only now. I don’t know what’s happening to my calf that hurts. Now lately I’m feeling pain and I’m getting more tired. This has been happening for a year. But it’s what corresponds”he explains without ceasing to be amazed and with a protection, a kind of legguard, in the affected area.
And double the bet: “I never thought of leaving. If I can’t compete, I still have someone who always waits for me – and fixes his eyes against the pediment -. I was thinking of a person who would give me food that would allow me to recover a little better. I want to play more. In August or September a +90 is done in Mallorca, Spain. I think and I want to go, although I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it”.
