“I hated myself.” Jana Sagués (Girona, 2005) skates since the age of five in the CPA Olot. The skates have accompanied him throughout his life, and became his lifesaver. During the pandemic, Jana began to suffer from anorexia. The desire to slide again to the rhythm of the music gave him the necessary strength to recover. This October, in his first full season since recovering, he won the Figure Skating Show Group World Championship with the CPA Olot. The club, precisely, was awarded on Tuesday at Girona Daily Awards.
Jana was lost. “I didn’t feel good about myself, I didn’t have my own identity and I didn’t know who I was,” he explains. At that time I was in the fourth year of high school. Confinement at home during the pandemic increased these feelings, not being able to go to high school, hang out with friends or skate. “The only thing I could control was myself and what I ate,” he says in an interview with El Periódico, from the same editorial group that Girona newspaper. Then he started to reproduce the first behaviors which led to anorexia, but she was not aware of it.
“Anorexia is what is seen physically, but what is wrong and really suffers is the inside. I hated myself inside, not physically”, he reveals. “When you suffer from this disease you have two people inside. The healthy person who wants to be cured and the one who is sick. It’s a constant struggle between the two, and you can only win it with willpower and a desire to heal. I remember that during the same day a thousand thoughts went through my head, there were moments when the healthy part had more strength and others when it could not”, he details.
Sports Award | CPA Olot: An amateur club in the world elite of skating
When they returned to the skating rink, their coach, Ricard Planiol, saw that something was wrong. He commented to Jana that I wouldn’t skate if I didn’t go to the doctor for them to prove that he could do it. She didn’t give it any importance, she was convinced that the doctor would allow her to skate. There came the shock of reality. They explained to him that he had anorexia. He didn’t believe it. He was not aware of the magnitude of the problem.
They took away individual training from him, but seeing that he wasn’t improving, they made the decision that he wouldn’t train with the group either the weekends. They stripped her of her skates. “It was one of the worst days of my life, I took it very badly,” he admits. Until this moment, when he had to leave high school to go to therapy, he made up excuses. I didn’t tell anyone that I had an eating disorder. “It took me a long time to assimilate it and have the willpower to push forward. It is not easy to find the will to want to heal yourself. They tell you that you suffer from anorexia, but it is difficult to recognize it. You need to believe it, see yourself prepared and gather all the resources to be able to face yourself”, she explains.
The first weekend without being able to train, she stood in front of her teammates and he explained to them that he had anorexia. It was obvious, and they all knew it. But it was a pivotal moment for Jana. He had begun to assimilate and recognize it. “It was an important chip change”, he assumes. Despite not being able to skate, he didn’t miss a single session. There she was, next to the technicians, watching her colleagues work. “Every weekend was an impetus to recover. I wanted to skate again and share experiences with my teammates”, she says. This desire to return and the change in treatment were key. He started going to the hospital three days a week, from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon. It was one intensive treatmentwith group and individual therapies.
Last year, Jana was able to smile again. Halfway through the season, he was released. He was able to get back on track. «Skating saved me from anorexia. It’s the reason that helped me get out of the pit I was in. My only motivation was to enjoy the track again with my teammates”, she says. In 2021, he participated in the World Cup in Buenos Aires. Being there was already a prize for her, even if they couldn’t win, they were runners-up.
This 2023 was Jana’s first full season after overcoming the disease. It has not been an easy year for CPA Olot. An unexpected role in the Catalan and Spanish tests made them have to decide whether to compete in the European or the World Cup, opting for the latter, in Colombia.
“Princesses don’t need a blue prince.” This was the premise of the performance Don’t come to me with stories, where they readapted Cinderella to convey a message of female empowerment. They scrubbed perfection. They conveyed the message with expressiveness, grace and elegance. No one had won a World Cup without qualifying for the European Championship until they arrived. When they were proclaimed champions, they cried with emotion. “This championship has marked me a lot. It has shown me that I am capable of anything I face in life. This was what he had wanted during his illness, for which he had fought”, he expresses.
“If you ask me who Jana was before the illness, I wouldn’t be able to answer you. The disease has helped me to be able get to know me better and accept me», he assures. Combining studies with treatment was not easy either. “I was in the first year of high school, and I could only go to class two days a week. Studies were in the background, my main goal was to heal myself». Now, he is studying ADE at Pompeu Fabra University, and he sees it in perspective. “I was able to enter the career I wanted, the university I wanted… and I’m cured”, she comments while smiling.
2023-11-23 19:28:59
#Skating #saved
