When she still had the last name Allman, Valarie Sion was a slender girl who danced ballet with great rhythm and harmony, and when she grew up she became the best discus thrower in the world, 1.83m, 70 kilos, pure fluidity and sensitive speed in the cage. She broke the stereotype that to be a thrower you had to stuff yourself with anabolic steroids, have colossal bodies in size, and give up grace, and Inés López, the 22-year-old from Madrid who qualified for the final on Friday (21:30), admires Valarie, and her pearl earrings, and has also started dancing, and in the Birmingham cage on a morning when the sun of a heat wave announced in the British West Midlands begins to scorch the cage, she makes her 1.80m and 75 kilos dance like never before, and makes the best throw of her life, 61.45m, just 44 centimeters from Sabina Asenjo’s national record that is already 10 years old. “There are no stereotypes in athletics. Each one arrives with their characteristics and competes,” she says, and next to her, competing, throwing 60 meters and also qualifying, is the French Mélina Robert Michon, 47 years old, who was already a junior world medalist 28 years ago, and silver at the Rio 16 Games. And she speaks almost like a proselytizer of throwing athletics, convinced of the goodness of her message, of her sincerity. “It makes me very happy that the women’s throwing sector in Spanish athletics is so thriving,” she says. “I hope I am for younger girls what Valarie is for me, an example to encourage them to practice it.”
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Beginnings at Jorge Gras’s school in Majadahonda, where Diego Casas, a finalist in men’s discus, also passed through. American style afterwards, since in 2021, right after finishing high school, she went to universities of the empire. First Kentucky, then Arizona, where she graduated in marketing, a devil in the sun who builds her technique and body little by little trained by Turner Washington and Marcus Makovicka. She rotates alternately on each foot, throws balanced and quickly whips her arm. A year ago she won the European under-23. Two months ago, she was third in the United States university championships. “I am very Spanish,” says the athlete, who trains with Frank Casañas, Cuban school, always the rhythm, in Pontevedra during Christmas and summer. “But a part of me belongs to the United States and Valarie is my biggest reference, not only as an athlete, but in everything, at all levels.”
In the competitive madness of the American university system, from March to June regional conferences and finals, Inés López has been seasoned competing every weekend. Used to the Arizona desert, she is not bothered by the heat nor scared by the transformation of the landscape caused by drought and global warming. And she takes the qualification of three attempts as a formality, one of the most feared procedures by all contest athletes. “After all, this is where my experience in the United States helps me, where there are always preliminaries,” she says, and recounts that she smiled when she saw her first attempt was null. “It always comes out like that, and the second is always the best.”
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Although discus in Europe does not reach the level of the United States, with several athletes around 70 meters, the competition in the final will be tough. It is led by the phenomenal Dutch Jorinde van Klinken – “she does what she wants, she is spectacular, what an arm,” says Inés López – a 26-year-old prodigy who has a personal best of over 70 meters and was already a silver medalist in shot put. And she will also face another Dutchwoman, Alida van Daalen, a year older than her, the thrower who representing the University of Florida took gold in the last university final.
