At 19, Mahamadou Dambelleh has just been crowned world swimming runner-up in the 50-meter freestyle at the World Paralympic Championships in Singapore. Born in Gambia, he arrived in Olot, his hometown, at seven months old, though he discovered swimming at the Club Natació de Castellfollit de la Roca, where he began a journey that has led him to the World Championships in Singapore. Dambelleh, who lost almost all his sight at the age of ten, speaks to ARA at the High-Performance Center in Sant Cugat del Vallès, where he trains.

Everything changes around Isabel Sánchez-Arán when she descends to the bottom of the sea. The lights, the temperature, and the pressure. "When you go down, you're always afraid; it's a mechanism we have to stay alive," she explains. But she can't stop herself from going deeper and deeper using only the strength of her lungs, without an oxygen bubble. These days, Isabel will try to be one of the first women to break the 100-meter barrier in apnea. That is, 100 meters while holding her breath.

Jere Mateo swam to the beach at Portpatrick, a beautiful little village on the Scottish coast. The locals watched him emerge from the sea, tired and unable to understand where he had come from. "I'm swimming from Ireland," he told them. Mateo had been swimming for twelve hours across the Northern Strait, from Northern Ireland to Scotland, overcoming low temperatures, tides, and jellyfish. "They applauded me. I was so happy that I forgot about my walking problems and fell," he explains, smiling. He had just become the first person to make this solo crossing. The first Catalan and the second person with reduced mobility. And the first with brain damage. "It was magical. During those hours of swimming, I was able to think a lot and organize many ideas. I came out at peace with myself," he adds.

Zidi Yu has already made a name for herself in the world of swimming at just 12 years old. The Chinese athlete fell just six hundredths of a second short of bronze in the 200m individual medley at the World Swimming Championships in Singapore. With a time of 2:09.21, she surpassed the best Spanish time in this category, achieved by Catalan Mireia Belmonte at the 2013 World Championships in Barcelona (2:09.45).

Josep Farré (Barcelona, ​​1946) will once again be the oldest swimmer this Saturday, competing in an Open Water Championship. He was the oldest swimmer last April in Ibiza at the national tournament. Now he will repeat the goal in Tarragona with the aim of completing the three kilometers in a time close to an hour. "It's been many years since I've had the goal of improving my times. At the beginning, I did them in about 50 minutes, but over the years, it's normal to lose speed and strength," he explains in a conversation with ARA. At the Spanish Championships in April, he completed the crossing in one hour and two minutes.

It's surely the most iconic photograph of the 1992 Olympic Games: a diver flying over the sky of Barcelona, ​​in the Montjuïc municipal swimming pool. When the divers in the platform competition made a jump, the city was behind them. Catalan diver, the young Max Liñan (Barcelona, ​​2005), who is training at the CAR in Madrid to pursue his dream: to be an Olympian in 2028 in Los Angeles. I was watching, and I asked to try it. When the family and I returned to Barcelona, ​​I was able to enter the CAR in Sant Cugat through Mar Rovira, the technical director. There's an indoor facility with a platform and diving boards of different heights. The other place where it should have been possible is at the Barcelona Games venue, the Montjuïc swimming pool, but "it's no longer used for diving." Seen by the world, it's incredible. "When you're up there and you see the city... it's impressive," says Max, who once took his mother to the ten-meter platform. "She was impressed. She didn't jump, of course," he recalls.

Last week saw plenty of reunions. Over 300 former Club Natació Barcelona were summoned to the historic Escullera pool to bid it farewell just before the start of the works to remodel it. Five different generations, among them athletes as important as Manel Estiarte. "It's not a sad day. I remember everything I have lived here, in the Escullera, and it is nice to know that it will have continuity," said one of the best players in the history of water polo. Swimmers, jumpers, players and members gathered in a pool that has become a small monument to the city's history. "It's not just the competition; many people learned to swim here," said Estiarte. The pool, a hundred years old, had been abandoned for years. And now, as part of an ambitious plan to remodel the CNB facilities, it will be filled with water again.