Paula Leitón: "Thanks to the work I've done on my body, I won Olympic gold."

Paula Leitón (Terrassa, 2000) is a water polo player for CN Sabadell. With the national team, she won a silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and a gold medal at the 2024 Paris Games.

She went to the public school in the Pere Viver neighborhood of Terrassa, across the street from her house. And even as a child, her favorite subject was physical education. "I had a really cool teacher, who's still there, and I think it was here that I got hooked on sports," she explains. In fact, she started swimming at the age of two and hasn't gotten any better since. "I've always been very overweight, and the doctor recommended my mother introduce me to a sport. First, I did swimming, and when I was seven, I switched to water polo."

Leitón, who is 1.9 meters tall, remembers that as a child, she already hung out with her teacher and was like her, because she's always been very tall. "I've always seen it as a good thing. Water polo has worked out for me; I've always been comfortable with it because my parents are also big, tall, so it's been normal for me," she says.

Ever since she was a child, she's combined her studies and sports. She trained in the afternoons until her second year of secondary school when she entered the Sant Cugat High Performance Center. "Then I had to get up early to catch the train. We had morning classes until eleven, trained from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., ate, and went to class again. At five, we went home, and I trained in the afternoons at the club," she says. At sixteen, she signed her first job contract with Sabadell as a professional water polo player. "I completed my A-levels online so I could combine them with what was my first experience with a professional team, where I was already training mornings and afternoons," she notes.

Currently, after completing a higher level of sports, she is studying primary education at UNIR to become a teacher. "I've been very aware that you can make a living from this sport while playing. Once I stop playing, I'll need a job, because otherwise, I won't be able to make a living. My parents have been clear about this issue since I was little," she says.

The discipline of sport

Water polo was a novelty for the family. "My mother cleans the farm, and my father is retired early. He was a formwork worker. They discovered water polo with me and have become unconditional fans," he says. His brother, two years younger, is a cook. "He played basketball, and one of us would go watch him, and the other would watch me. My parents have made a huge sacrifice, spending many hours watching me game after game."

At fifteen, Leitón went to the World Championships in Kazan, and at sixteen, to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. "I found myself. It was at the time when Andrea Blas left the team due to an injury, and that's when I joined."

As for his social life, the athlete says that his current friends are from the sports world, teammates, or from the CAR. "In primary school, my classmates would play after school. I was very disciplined and knew I had to go to training."

After fulfilling her dream and becoming an Olympic champion with the water polo team, Paula Leitón had to endure insults and criticism. The Catalan faced fatphobia with education. "No one expects this to happen at the most beautiful moment of their career. Verbalizing what happened to me has not only helped me, but has helped many people."

"The work I've done on my body, my strength, is what has allowed me to compete at a high level and be in the position of the buoy, which requires a physical state that is different from that of the shuttlecock. There was a time when I was thinner and people praised me. But I asked myself: "I asked myself: "I asked myself: "I asked myself: "I asked myself: And I said to myself: "I have to be well to be the best in water polo, so let's work," she says.