The life of Tomás-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté (Sabadell, 1999) changed when he was three years old. Watching television, he discovered figure skating on ice, seeing the Salt Lake City Games, with the brilliant performance of the Russian Aleksei Yagudin. "I told my mother I liked it, that's it," he recalls. Tomás didn't stop until he was taken to a rink in his hometown, where he began roller skating. And when he discovered that Barcelona had two ice rinks, he asked to go and joined the now-defunct FC Barcelona skating section. Thus began a routine that combined figure skating on rollers with ice skating at the now-closed Skating Club rink on Roger de Flor Street and the FC Barcelona ice rink, until at age 13, the young man from Sabadell decided he would go all out to become an Olympic ice skater. "It's more fun, faster, and flows better than on wheels," he says. And this Tuesday, he made his Olympic debut. A dream come true.

In 2022, Queralt Castellet from Sabadell became the first Catalan to win a medal at the Winter Olympic Games In a sport, the halfpipewhich has no facilities in Catalonia. Now, skater Nil Llop (El Prat de Llobregat, 2000) will make his Olympic debut this February in a sport that also lacks facilities in our country: speed skating. In both cases, these are athletes who have left home for many months to pursue their dreams.