What is always said about those who practice rhythmic gymnastics: “A tough sport! So many hours of training!”

That's the first thing they say, yes. It's hard, but over the course of life, everything you want to do right is hard and hard. It is true that gymnasts have to train a lot of hours, that they devote a lot of time to training, but everyone who lives with a little bit of nothing has to spend hours and hours, there is nothing else.

Yes, it is more hours than in many other sports, with great dedication,
but it must be borne in mind that the duration of the exercise of a gymnast is 1 and a half minutes. In this minute and a half you don't have the margin to make the least mistake. Gymnastics is not football, it's not 90 minutes. In football, for example, you have a margin to be wrong, which you have done wrong on one occasion, you can fix it on the other, unlike gymnastics. Since the gymnast has no margin to make a mistake, the exercise must be fully internalized, and this is achieved only by repetition. Through repetitions and through reasonable work.

Agurtzane Ibargutxi, a children’s trainer in Vitoria-Gasteiz, told me that the water you’ve spent is the time when you won the gold medal in Atlanta.Es the water that’s gone… I haven’t left behind that time, but I’ve had to turn a page, as it’s
usually said. I started living another life, abandoning gymnastics. The lives that precede and follow the gold medal in Atlanta are two, not linked. I remember that at that time there was a time that I had to assimilate and there was another time. Today I see it with another calm, of course. Now it's easier: because of that time, I'm what I am, but if I was going to go ahead, I had to close that time.

Although it wasn't easy, you retired. Many sportsmen and women do not get it right.

It's possible. We run the risk of being stuck in sports, and sports life is not real, it is not a real life. It's a wonderful life, but not real. In my case, when I was forced to leave the Spanish team and returned to Vitoria and landed there, I went to life.

Indeed, in the book that reports that life – Tears for a medal (Tears for a medal) – refers to abandonment after abandoning sport and high level competition.

I've been publishing the book for eight years, and I've been making progress since then, but when I published it, I had one of my goals, to prevent abandonment after sport, although it still happens. The sportsman, leaving his sports life, faces a great vacuum. The athlete in his loneliness! That's what happened to me: I was at the top, at the podium in Atlanta, where I did no more than before, and as soon as the sun was hidden and before the moon appeared, I was at home, in Vitoria, above the sky and below the earth. It is difficult to assimilate. There are people who need help along that road, otherwise jobs.

It's been 20 years since you won the Atlanta Gold Medal, and you've also organized acts to remember it. It's not easy to shut the time down.

This was closed, but on a personal level. How are you going to take it for granted, being the only Olympic medal ever won in gymnastics? We have to remember him, and I think that is fine. It helps me in my work, and today I work because of what I got through gymnastics. In this sense I have not closed the time, but personally I have to say clearly: “You’ve won the Olympic medal, gymnastics has been the focus of your life, but now you have to start another life.”

Gold medal at the Olympic Games. Will that be the maximum?

Yes… I remember that once, in one of those usual acts, I met a group of actors. We presented each other and one of the actors recognized me, I mean, I knew who I was. “Olympic medal? It’s as if I received the Oscar!” He said it, he gave it that value. And it's true. When you live in this little world, you don't realize, you don't know what you've achieved. I, for example, now give more value to that gold medal than I did then. The Olympic medal is the maximum that can be achieved at a sporting level.

Is that Olympic medal the Tania Lamarca presentation card?

As I always say, thanks to that medal, I have a personal filing card. It's not my business card, but the adjectives I have given me that medal, ha, ha…

He was sixteen when he got on the podium in Atlanta. I was still a little girl.

Yeah, poor girl! The truth is, I didn't know what was hanging from my neck. I was fascinated, yes, I had watched it on TV because it was a medal, but nothing else. When I called my parents, I said, "I'm hanging him from my neck! The medal that all athletes have!” Of course, not all athletes had gold medals, but I saw it then. When I came back from Atlanta, when I met older athletes than me, I began to realize the gold medal. No, really, at the time I didn’t know what I’ve achieved, ha, ha…

I cried for a medal. Didn't anyone cry, shed tears?

No. I felt excited, but no one else I cried. I am indeed a lacrimal.

The top of your career, podium. For five years you have joined gymnastics, with sixteen Olympic medals, you have abandoned top-level sport at the age of seventeen.

Well, when I started doing gymnastics in the girls, I didn't think it was anything extraordinary, I didn't want to be a good gymnast, I didn't even know I was going to be a good gymnast, I wasn't even thinking about high competition. Everything went slowly, without me knowing it. I had fun practicing gymnastics, and in the end it became a nice pastime of the afternoon. In my case, the absence of other claims has been fundamental. I didn't want to be an Olympic champion, even my parents didn't think about it. I simply started walking: I had ease, I went to the championships, I had a good time… and as I had a good time, I kept training.

And one day, fourteen years old, you were Spain's champion of rhythmic gymnastics.

That year we were hopeful. I was in the top positions in that year's competitions in the Basque Country and we wanted to stay in the top five, or at least the expectation. But nobody expected me to be a champion. But I did a good exercise, always better than everybody else, and I won the individual championship.

However, they did not take you to the Spanish team, despite your height: it was a fifty-four meter and they asked for a meter and sixty.

They sent us to do the sport test, but because of the height they pushed me back. Now they do not ask for a minimum height, but there is almost no need to ask. Today's gymnasts are longer than the tower. Everything has changed since then. It is something that did not happen twenty years ago. For example, gymnasts have their life outside of gymnastics: they have their family next to them, they have friends and friends, they have their studies… Fortunately, today gymnastics is like the rest of sports.

Equally, it's possible, but your Olympic medal is worth more than winning the World Cup, unlike some sports.

On a sports level, as far as athletes are concerned, the Olympic Games and the world championships are the same. Contestants are also equal. But the Olympic Games and the world championships have an entirely different echo. It is a scourge for all minority sports: being a world champion has no echo. On the contrary, the victory at the Olympic Games also has a huge impact on minority sport. In that we started all the sports from scratch: gymnast, tennis player, footballer, athlete… we are at the same height, we all aspire to the same medal, we are all going to have a similar echo.

You made vinegar from many books when you left high competition, or they made you abandon. Now you have another conception.

The book looks so blatant and negative, at least in part, but what I wanted to convey was that if I could do it again: the experience has been unique, totally positive in my life, despite all the negative aspects. The high-level sport is hard, and I also experienced it: having to get away from my family and friends, training up to eight hours a day, this, that and that, but I had fun doing gymnastics, I had no obligation. If I hadn't enjoyed it, I don't think I would have stayed. I think it was harder for my parents than for me: they knew I was only training eight hours in a row, away from them, in a center like that, and it wasn't easy. I, after all, was doing what I liked.

One day you were at the top -- gold medal on your chest -- the day after you were out -- outside the world of high-level sport, you needed to start a real life.

I've had everything: first, because I was low they didn't want to catch me; in the end, because I was fat, I had given more weight than I needed, I was kicked out. Ha, ha… But I also learned a lot from there. The timing of withdrawal is very complicated for the athlete. In other words, withdrawing at a time when you have not decided to do so, either by injury or by technical decision, is very complicated. Another thing is for everyone to decide and prepare the time to leave the sport.

In his case, the decision of the technicians forced him to leave.

And I had to face the new situation. I was eighteen years old when I was forced to abandon top-level sport, but I overcame the situation, and today, she taught me how to deal with the difficult situations that I get from everyday life. It was a very hard learning process, and that's why I made the book. We believe that the athlete has retired and has already fulfilled his life. And it's not. I was eighteen years old, I had achieved the highest level of sport, but I went back to Vitoria and I had nothing.

Difficulties to resume real life in form, with family and friends.

My friends were studying in college, and I had to study in high school among those who were younger than me. It wasn't easy. There were also imbalances at home: at the age of fourteen I left home and at the age of eighteen I returned. I was a kid, I came young, and there was also a gap to fill. It was really a very complicated thing.

A memory of the Atlanta Olympic Games, Tania.

On the opening day, we went back to the Olympic stadium. That lap cost me much more than doing gymnastics. After all, I went out to do my work on the tapestry, I knew how to do it, I was trained for it – despite the usual nerves – and instead, turning the Olympic stadium around with all the athletes turned out to be exciting to me. This is my memory.