▲ Yarely Salazar assures that she resents the reduction in her scholarship. Photo Conade
Juan Manuel Vazquez
Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, July 11, 2023, p. a10
Yarely Salazar was able to heal fresh wounds with the two gold medals she won in track cycling at the recent Central American and Caribbean Games San Salvador 2023. At the beginning of last year the outlook was all promises, she had the chance to become the first mexican in the Tour of France and fighting for a medal at the Tokyo Olympics. Neither one nor the other. Clumsiness and absurd decisions by the federal bureaucracy condemned her to a terrible experience in the Japanese event and surgery on her leg dispelled her dreams of being a pioneer in the highest professional road competition.
That’s why these two gold medals heal her. The same as verifying that cycling in Mexico exhibited historic regional growth by winning almost all track titles. The tricolor delegation obtained nine golds, one silver and two bronzes; only two championships remained in the hands of competitors from Colombia, the nation that dominated these events.
This is a historic result for Mexico, but we still have a long way to go to make the greatest leap in cycling worldwide, he comments from Canada, where he trains with his professional team; We are many years behind in technology and we need a lot of institutional support to be able to raise our level.
Being in a position to fight against the powers of cycling, both track and road, requires concentration in camps where they can prepare the competition circuit. The majority, he says, ends up looking for a way to finance the expenses that this represents on their own account.
In the Central American Games, most of us bring our equipment that we pay for. A wheel of the best brand, because we want to have the best to be able to compete, costs around six thousand pesos and is only good for one or two races at the most, he gives an example.
Last year, in addition, he had the misfortune to require surgery for a condition called dead leg and which usually affects professional cyclists. This is a disease in an artery and not treating it means the definitive withdrawal.
I looked for where to get treatment in Mexico, but here a similar surgery was only performed on the heart, not on the legs and especially on athletes. I only found a specialized center in the Netherlands, where they treated me, he recounts.
That surgery cost him a million pesos and 200 thousand for a week of hospitalization. To get an idea of what this amount represents, Yarely considers that the preparation of a cyclist for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, from now until its inauguration in a year, would be approximately one and a half million pesos.
And maybe I look short, she warns. but with that you can pay the costs of travel, food, competitions and equipment.
Although Yarely clarifies that she has the scholarship she receives from the National Sports Commission (Conade), she regrets that the amount was reduced after the results she obtained at the Tokyo Olympics. A decline that she says she resents even when she does the grocery shopping.
It must be remembered that the Mexican Cycling Federation at that time was involved in a scandal that had an international echo. For the summer fair, the best competitors were not registered for the tests they dominated, but they used criteria that were considered absurd.
“I was at my best to compete in everything. That was my test, but they registered me en route, because I had also obtained that place, but I did not prepare to compete in that modality. The result was terrible, ”he recalls.
Although she heard that the director of Conade, Ana Gabriela Guevara, minimized the importance of the Central American Games, Yarely thinks that these results put Mexico on another level of cycling. They mean the beginning of the Olympic cycle and by dominating we make noise as a country, hopefully they will also have an effect on the amounts of the scholarships, she confides.
2023-07-11 08:47:55
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