Adrián Ben is like good golfers who know how to interpret the slopes of the green, the wind direction, the dryness of the grass… The Galician, pride of Viveiro, has a special knack for reading races and always finding the best path to victory. He did it again in Málaga to win a 1,500m Spanish Championship that seemed to be slipping away before he started an electric comeback. Ben defeated the fast Carlos Sáez in a slow race (3m 47.54), who had everything under control after launching his classic attack in the final straight, until he saw a purple trail emerging to his left, in lane one, where there was supposedly no gap, the door left open by Nacho Fontes, and he conceded by 11 hundredths. Third, satisfied because he thinks it will be enough to complete the trio selected for the European Championships in Birmingham (August 10-16), came Mariano García, the Murcian who, a few months ago in Torun, won the World Indoor Championship.
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The 27-year-old champion, coached by Arturo Martín, revalidates the title won last year in Tarragona and, euphoric, overflowing with self-confidence, tore off his bib number as soon as he crossed the finish line and showed it to the public at Ciudad de Málaga while pointing to his name with a finger. A defiant gesture after a season in the shadow of Martín Segurola, the 23-year-old who has fascinated with his long and powerful stride and who had begun to gain a reputation for being unbeatable after winning all eight races he had competed in since April, but who overestimated his strength against three ‘elite’ rivals. “He seemed unbeatable, yes, but no one is unbeatable. With Josh Kerr – the brand new world record holder for the mile – I’m 1-0…”, Ben jokes. “I saw Segurola making a titanic effort on the outside and I knew he wouldn’t make it.”
Ben, with an impressive track record, an athlete who has picked the clover of major finals – fifth in the Olympic Games, fourth, sixth and eighth in the World Championships and sixth in a European Championship – had been debating for weeks between the 800m and the 1,500m. The middle-distance runner from Viveiro, a student of rankings, had seen that the two-lap race seemed more accessible because in the 1,500m, Kerr, Nigel Laros, Isaac Nader, Jake Wightman appeared… “We are talking about world champions and runners-up. It’s a ‘prime’ level, but then I found out that neither Kerr nor Laros are finally going to run. That greatly increased my chances, although we are taking for granted that I will beat Habz, Coscoran, Arese… But with two weeks ahead, I know that if I gain a bit of speed, I can try to be European champion.”
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Málaga has also seen María Vicente, the prodigious Catalan heptathlete who trains in San Sebastián with Ramón Cid and hopes to continue growing before the stop in Birmingham, flourish again after a long and tortuous sporting winter due to injuries. Vicente took the title against Sofía Cosculluela, the 22-year-old rival who has made a leap in quality in the United States, at the University of Washington. Green shoots of Spanish athletics, such as Andrea Sales, Spanish hammer throw champion at just 19 years old, a girl from Montalba (Castellón), who has already broken the 70-meter barrier. Or the 22-year-old 400m runner Ángel González, who won the 400m (45.91 in very tough conditions of heat and strong wind).
One of the great duels experienced in Málaga came with two members of the 4x400m relay that has brought so much success and popularity to athletics in recent times. Blanca Hervás beat Paula Sevilla by an infinitesimal difference (52.31 for the Madrid native and 52.32 for the La Mancha native). The relay will once again be one of Spain’s great assets at the European Championships, in two weeks, as will race walking. Olympic champion and four-time world champion, María Pérez, broke the Spanish record in the 10,000m race walk before traveling as a favorite to Birmingham. Another race walker, Paul McGrath, European runner-up and world bronze medalist, won with authority at the National Championship and will now seclude himself in Glasgow, where his family is from, to finish fine-tuning his preparation away from the rigors of the heat in Spain.
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