Physiology is the study of the functioning of tissues and organs of living beings. How does the organism of a high-level athlete work?

Like any high-level tool: with great precision! It works the same way a normal man would, but with much more value, precision and capacity. However, high-level performance is not only a consequence of genetics, it is also the environment that adapts it. Despite being the best genetics, if you don't work, you won't be a champion. And on the contrary, despite training and training, if you don't have any gifts of your own, you can hardly be a champion. We need both of them to be high-level athletes.

How does high-level sport combine with popular sport?

At a humble level, he starts practicing sports and reaches the elite with skills and training. No one is born world champion or European champion. Two different worlds are the high level and popular sport, the one does not take away the other. One is the marathon of the Olympic Games and another is totally different, but compatible, to participate in one of the marathons that are usually held in our capitals, where anyone who has prepared himself can participate. Both have a place in today's society.

The popular athlete wants to be high level…

But it's impossible. Another thing is for everyone to do appropriate training for their skills and ages. Training, after all, is time and yet nothing more than for the athlete concerned to reach the highest possible level. Everyone wants us to improve our brand… That seems to me absolutely to be applauded: that the Maratonian who has run in four and a half hours wants to run the next time in four hours and twenty minutes, the 42 kilometres is entirely reasonable, I think it is good. But along with that, this Maratonian has to know that he will never be like Martin Fiz, that he will not beat his brands. Or the cyclist who makes the Quebrantabones in fourteen hours must know that he will never be Miguel Indurain.

Training is time, as you said.

For example, to prepare a particular marathon, you'll need a summer, but to be able to make a marathon and two and three, you need years. The years give us mechanical efficiency and thus the ability to compete more and more economically at a certain speed. In other words, the athlete who consumes this amount of oxygen at a speed of ten kilometres per hour can, by training – say three years – burn less oxygen to run at the same speed. In other words, reduce consumption. In other words, if a vehicle needs seven litres today to travel a hundred kilometres, over time – with our training – instead of seven litres it would need 6.2. It's about increasing mechanical efficiency and metabolic capacity. Important ways to improve our physical capacity. We did that through training.

Training, again, is the key.

There are people who by nature are more efficient. Genetics. But this efficiency, in general, can be improved through training. Not much, but improving it. This improvement, however small, has a huge impact on long-term sports performance.

We thought training was just a pre-competition preparation. But as I read you, training and re-strengthening come at the same time, as well as adjustment, detraining and even excess training!

And food, additives, altitude training -- and other elements. If high-level training were a simple subject, there would be no undergraduate studies, doctoral programs, master's degrees, federation degrees… Construction is not just putting the bricks on top of each other, right? It's more complicated than that, so if you build a house, you need architecture studios. I often say: long-term training is not a telecommunications engineering, not an astrophysicist, but knowledge and knowledge are essential.

Since when is this knowledge and knowledge necessary? Sports science, let's say.

In the past, sport was not as widespread as it is now. Today everyone is involved in all sports! The point is that, with the participation of everyone, it is becoming increasingly difficult for anyone to impose themselves on sportsmen and women around the world. That's why it's hard to become high-level athletes, because we're practicing sports all over the world, because they're playing football all over the world, they're running around the world ... Perhaps competitiveness is not the same in curling, as few countries participate in curling. But, for the rest, it is impossible that in such an extensive sport in the world, a girl or a boy will come out of nowhere – without high-level scientists, without coaches, without food experts, without psychologists… – and win everyone around us. It's impossible.

Is high-level sport science?

It's not science, but it's science. And science, in this case, even if it doesn’t certify the good results, offers more chances of “getting right.” If we train someone into opinion, it's a great opportunity to get it wrong. For example, the day of the competition will hardly be able to give the best of itself. Science helps us to control the whole training process and, as a result of it, to achieve a more satisfactory result: on that particular day we want, we will get our athlete to reach the highest level.

Giving the highest category does not necessarily mean winning. Come on, science is helping a cycling fabric, both at Itzulia and at Emakumeen Bira. Who should be highlighted in these tissues?

It seeks excellence, but at all levels. In other words, you need excellence not only as far as the athlete is concerned, but also as regards managers, coaches, mechanics, bus drivers and drivers, food experts, bicycle producers, biomechanics and so on. We should all try to be better than everyone else. Excellence concerns us all. It's not about being a better cyclist than anyone on your team. It's more than that.

And yet being better than anyone at all these levels doesn't necessarily mean victory.

Science gives us opportunities, it helps us, nothing else. Fortunately, it's not an exact science. Otherwise, the athletes would be gathered and admitted to the laboratory, run a series of tests and distribute the medals according to their results: gold, silver and bronze. It's over. Fortunately, there are always competitions, “accidents” and “accidents” that are common in the competition. How does Osasuna ever win Barça? How does a Euskaltel-Euskadi cyclist get better in a career than Nibali? Fortunately, not everything is science.

When you win, the result is the result of work. And when you don't win?

Whether or not you win, you always have to assess whether or not the athlete has given the size of their ability. When the measure is not taken, a thorough analysis is necessary: training planning, adjustment, last minute training, feeding, material selection, nervousness of the athlete…

Psychology…

Some people think that we only resort to the psychology of sport when it comes to psychological problems, but not much less! The psychology of sport offers us different techniques that can help when there are no problems. We need to use psychology to avoid problems and optimize training. When performance is not the level that corresponds to the athlete, it is up to us to analyze the reason. When we win, we also have to do the test.

I thought there was no choice but to celebrate.

Celebrate, yes, but also analyze it. Winning doesn't mean that we've made the perfect race, that we've competed perfectly. It can be, but not necessarily. A failure can win. You can swim, do an exam and say: “It wasn’t a good way out, it wasn’t as fast as it could have been. I could take my time down by two hundredths.” I've been preparing Eneko Llanos for ten years. Eneko has won a lot of races in those years, but he's done two or three perfect races. You might even be wrong in choosing socks! If you've had blisters on your feet in the last mile, for example, it means that those stockings weren't right. It's always what you learn, what you improve, and if you don't try to do it, you're giving the enemy the opportunity to reach your level, and the question is to go one step further than the rival, at most possible levels.

How do you know if you're ahead of your opponent?

For starters, the results tell you whether or not you are further away than your opponent. In order to do this, of course, it is necessary that research and development, which you live up to, be aware of the research and development done by others and that, in addition, they are research projects outside of you. These are none other than yours, others will work, but if you develop your own line of research, applied research, that's what matters to you.

The aim of high-level sport is to make the spectator enjoy.

And the spectator has more fun when performance is higher, when the athlete goes faster – not in vain say altius citius fortius in Latin! – and in the end, when victory is achieved.

How long is it citius, altius, fortius? When does the decline begin?

Decay? In endurance tests, for example, athletes are increasingly present. According to a recent study, the age of the top ten in the Hawaiian Ironman test has increased from 27 to 34 years in the last thirty years. And they're getting faster and faster! Eneko Llanos, for example, is at its best fit and in November is about to turn 37. Of course, we know more and more about training, feeding, caring for the body… But decay is necessary and comes. If we don't do anything, at 38, our organism begins to lose its endowments. And for example, over 40 years it is very difficult to be able to meet the demands of high-level sport: the importance of recovery is enormous, and from one age it is very difficult to recover from one day to the next.

Recovery from day to day. That's what surprises us, the ability of cyclists who run like lightning in three weeks. And soon he said the phrase: “These are not just aspirin taken.” There are additional foods…

Taking into account the demands and needs of the high-level athlete, supplemental feeding is one that cannot provide a healthy diet. They do not replace food, they are added, and nothing else. When we need proteins, we don't normally take the protein shake, we work the most appropriate diet for the sport in question. For some reason, if this type of food is not enough, you will need to turn to another source for protein, carbohydrates, vitamins or whatever.

Do we have to talk about doping?

Not necessarily. But it's a reality, it's red alive in the high-level sport, and you have to talk occasionally. The repeated practice of doping is detrimental to sport and to sportsmen and women because it does not help to appreciate the level and value of the work they do. On the other hand, it detracts from the credibility of all the work carried out by the athlete. Sometimes athletes themselves fail. I really like sport and I see the work of most athletes firsthand without any deceit. I think it is very bad that it should be taken away with credibility. I know, with all certainty, that most high-level athletes in the world are within the framework of the law. What a minority does is harms everyone else.

Why is doping exaggerated associated with cycling and football, ball, tennis, basketball are free…?

They have brought many things to the surface in cycling in recent times, demonstrating a certain culture within cycling. In other sports it has not been possible to ventilate, but it does not mean that it has not been done. In cycling it has been noticed because it has been brought to the surface or because it was actually more serious than anywhere else. However, today there is a very remarkable cultural change. In cycling, in any other sport, and even in any area of society, there will always be people willing to let down, but that does not disappoint all of us who are part of society.