We finished the Olympic Games and we thought the year was ready for you. We are not very experts… Now
[15 September] is the World Cup, in Bratislava, but this year I will not play. I wanted to spend the quiet month of August. The Bratislava channel, for its part, has been modified this year and if it could compete under minimum conditions, it would need to train for fifteen days in August. A week after returning from Tokyo the Spanish championship was played, then I would have to go to Bratislava, then the World Cup… Even if I came from Tokyo, I would spend two months all and I would not have seven days to be at home.

You had to stop… You have to take
care of your health, I've been in the piranzas for many years and, on the other hand, the Olympic cycle has been very long. Optionally, this year I decided to take a vacation in August and start the course with my daughter quietly. For once! Because every year our end-of-season coincides with the beginning of the course and I can't enjoy my daughter or yours. Conciliation is always difficult, in all households. This year, however, I decided to start the course calmly with my daughter. And so on.

You say a long Olympic cycle. The last five years. But you haven't started to run the intense waters in the afternoon, and you haven't filled the Olympic cycles. There I was at the 2008 Games in Beijin…

It is many years and, moreover, I have never been left entirely. Three weeks, right, when I had the child. When I've had injuries, I've had to stop again or again. Each intervention entails rehabilitation. I don’t know if last year I didn’t stay for a couple of weeks… But this year I had to stop, reflect, think about the future, keep the rope strong or not… I have time to make decisions. Need for stopping. On the other hand, the Post-Game of Tokyo has been very hard, I have also perceived it for health.

They say the medal has a lot of burdens.
Yes. Whether it's gold, whether it's silver, whether it's bronze, there are big obligations, commitments to each other, but our first obligation is to train, to prepare as best as possible the next goal. And so many obligations keep you from properly training. Some are very pleased with these commitments after the medal. I don't like it much, I'd rather be with my 3-year-old daughter. Because, when I had Ane [daughter], I stayed only for three weeks, I kept giving her all, after the dream of winning the gold medal, with the requirement of training and everything that is supposed to be a daughter. I always have to get better, and that's where I was, but then I started to get vertigo. All year round with vertigo. The next year, I broke my side. One after the other.

We, on the other hand, don’t see that…
Because you only see canoeing every four years! Ha, ha… It's not just that. I like to train calmly, out of the spotlights. That is the good thing about minority sport. And also, if you don't, you can't, you have to train hard, train well, concentrate. Before, when we lived in Seu d'Urgell (Catalan Countries), every time I had to go to Barcelona I had two and a half hours drive, and to Lleida, an hour and three quarters to take the train or plane there. They were very hard working days and the next day we had to retrain, one step forward and three behind. So, this year I knew I had to stay, for my health.

It's a huge erosion.
Yes, and years go by, if you do training, but I don't lie down as easily as before. I have to bear that in mind. On the other hand, I do not want this episode of vertigo to be repeated, I saw them red. And the brake is for that too, right, to slow down when we need it and to reflect on the future, for example.

The final abandonment will also give rise to vertigo, well, isn't it?
Yes! Ha, ha… I have been thinking that for years, “what do I do when I left the canoeing?” but I have no answer. I didn't know what to do after the 2020 Games, continue, don't follow. Before the games, I trained a lot with other girls, and when I trained with them, I realized that I still gave to canoeing, both in training and in competition, and that they also wanted to train with me, that they studied a lot, that they thanked me. “Less bad for me? I also speak for my interest, and you also give me a lot of things.” But this happened in 2019, before the Games.

But at the Olympic Games, it was a year late. This year they have been played.
Yes, and before the Games, the same concern, then what I would do, follow me, don't follow. Today my coach and husband Xabier Etxaniz have left the Bratislava World Cup, and the team, my son [Pau Etxaniz], Miren Lazkano, Olatz Arrangi… and they have given me envy! I'm glad I felt envious. That means that Maialen is still there, that I have him to give more. I thought that after the Games I would need a two-month reflection, but I think I've done that reflection. And yet, I need time to do things that I like, to get out of training and competitive dynamics, but I still have the inside alive.

Does the medal equate all sorrows and pains?
Iguala… The fact that piragua moves and enjoys equals everyone! The medal is the prize for work. During training, some moments are not easy or enjoyable, while the medal awards those unpleasant moments. In another case, I enjoy making piranzas, that's the passion I've always had. As the years go by, what used to be a hobby begins to have an air of work, and that's what makes me sad, because now piragua is between hobby and work. Many workouts are work, they do not satisfy me as much as before, but they are essential to go to the competition and do a good job. Training aims to improve, speed and well-being on a given day of competition.

It's thought by all of you who are on the upper level, but few of you are dominated. Details determine competition.
Yes, more in our case. We have to walk in living water, it is never cyclical, it is not repetitive, it has a huge fluctuation, the circuits and manoeuvres that are put on us are absolutely demanding and, furthermore, until the day of the competition we have no record of the manoeuvre that they will send us. It's like an exam, we don't know what questions they're going to ask us. The one who makes the least mistakes wins the competition. There is always a mistake, even if it is minimal. There are canoeists of tremendous level, almost always high, but there are three in the world. Three around the world. Next to them are eight others who want to be up, sometimes a little higher, sometimes a little lower, but always among the top eight.

You are one of the best.
Right now. I'm in that fight, and being in that fight makes me feel proud, being in that fight and even staying there. Being upstairs is nothing easy. When the thing goes right it seems very easy, but when it doesn't go right you realize how difficult it is to be there and stay in it.

You have a great list of medals at the Olympic Games and at the World Championships of Europe and one. What happens when you don't win?
Do you win? You almost never win, you have to start out there! You take more deaf than reward. That's why the prize gives us what it says. When things don't go right, I, at least, start to give my head to everybody, to check what I've done, what's happened, why, to think, to look for reasons. This reflection shows the direction in which you have to work or gives you useful clues for the future. Bad competitions do a lot of good things.

Bad competitions… At the Beijing Games you almost stayed out of the competition.
And that drove me to fire inside. He didn't leave me alone. The next time that day I went back hard to training, the bad work of the previous day was an extra motivation to do better and, for example, the World Championship we had at home next year, and I knew that it would be me who would train more hours on that channel, by far! I obsessively prepare the most important quotes, and so I prepared it, I knew that that global one was going to be for me, and before not, but I did it in second place: I won the qualifying test, I won the semifinal, but I played the final and the second! An amazing result for me. That's where I started to tread podiums. When I got to London, it was the second in the world ranking, I knew I had to go win games. Knowing that you have the chance to win is very nice, it gives you illusion.

You went to Tokyo with a chance to win...
But I knew I wasn't the fastest on the circuit. During the Olympic cycle, Jessica Fox and Ricarda Funk were the fastest, but this did not mean that the day of the end of the Olympic Games were also the fastest. That was our strategy, that of Xabi and the bione. The goal was to do my best, to focus on my descent, aside from Jessica and Ricarda, because for many years my obsessions have been very quick and I'd like to walk as fast as they do. But I couldn't. However, I managed to reach the finals and reach the international finals is nothing easy, let alone in the Games. In the end, on the contrary, I did my job and, in the end, I took the silver medal home!

You have said it easily, “take the medal and go home.” Your meals are full of a minute and a half of tension.
It's very intense, yes. I don't know 24, there were 25 doors. The first door had no difficulty, nor the last, but all the others were enormously difficult, all the time you had to keep the piragua straight, the thrust you had to do correctly, the body had to be very stable… It wasn’t an easy circuit. On the other hand, they said that that day could be a typhoon. In some sports they abandoned the competition, but in us they did not. In the morning I thought: “I wish it were a typhoon, if the wind hit hard, if the difficulties increased. This would lead us to match Jessica [Fox] and Ricarda [Funk].” But there were no typhoons, it rained in the morning, not much less, but it served to refresh the temperature. At noon it was hot, but, well, the thing went OK.

They have acted without spectators for the pandemic.
We knew there were not going to be spectators, but at least games have been made. The situation has not been comfortable for anyone. The least for the sick. For Japan it has not been easy either. There have been no spectators, but I thought of something else. “What a joy, in the end we are in the Games!” He hadn't spent energy, they would have been spectators, they wouldn't have been, they thought. I've enjoyed it a lot. For once I got quiet, proud to be there, proud of the road that got there, and that was a new feeling in my case. I won the Rio gold medal, and I was very happy, but the next day it had happened. I had something else in my head.

The past has happened in Tokyo.
I was especially pleased and proud of the path that has been taken: being in the battle of the medals is not easy and always being in that struggle, even more difficult. It's also a lot to be in the finals. I was proud, 38 years old, mother, leaving many young competitors at home… I was very proud to go to Tokyo, I have enjoyed the Games more than ever, I did not know that I was going to live another Game, because the way for them is not easy. For me the Tokyo Games have been very special...

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Objective I
“From 2009 to 2016 I won almost all the World Championships and Olympic Games qualifying tests. That's terrible. So in the 2016 games, we knew very clearly that it wasn't important to win qualifying tests, but to win the final. The goal was to reach the end, overcome the classification test. And that's how it came out. & '97; I surpassed it very little by little, but I surpassed it! Xabi [coach] was affected by the nerve...”

Objective II “...I
told him to be calm, that the goal was to classify him, not to make good results. The semifinal was fine, and the end was terrible. However, in the end, when I was coming down, I thought of a time when gold was moving away. But I came down and I saw that I had spent a lot of time. It wasn't the best descent in the world, but I myself made the least mistake. The participants were still there, but I knew I gained gold.”

Objective III
“I participated in the Olympic Games in Beijin, London, Rio and Tokyo, yes. Games are very emotional lenses, emotion has a lot of strength, and being at the exit is not easy, we get a lot of pressure on one side and on the other, which makes it very difficult to give the best of us a hundred percent. And the usual thing: the one who makes the least mistakes wins. There’s the key, doing as little as possible.”