Mar Molné: "I had to choose between playing the crow or Olympic shooting"

BarcelonaFew Catalan athletes can claim to be world champions. Mar Molné i Magrinyà (Tarragona, 2001) can, and twice over. Just a few days ago, she won both the individual and team gold medals at the World Shooting Championships in Athens, a historic achievement. She has been living in Granada for four years now, where the Spanish Shooting Federation's training center is located, and from where she answers the call of ARA.

Did you expect to be a champion?

— I was happy just reaching the final. I wanted to do well and I really pushed myself during training. But not for the competition, but for myself. I was already happy just reaching the final, and whatever happened, happened.

In Paris you came within a hair's breadth of a medal in your Olympic debut. You finished fourth. Have you changed anything in your training methods these past few months?

— No, I've continued the same way, it's just that now I have more experience. In this sport, you have to be very careful with timing, breathing, and heart rate to react quickly when the clay target flies out. In Paris, I didn't control everything that was happening around me. There, we shot the first 25 targets and then they gave a five-minute break... and I didn't realize it. I got ready to keep shooting too soon, which led me to miss the next two shots. At the World Championship, I didn't miss those details. I controlled what was happening, I was attentive, and I prepared myself at the right moments.

They say you sometimes learn more from defeat than from victory. Those two missed shots in Paris were a valuable lesson.

— Yes, absolutely. A defeat is a learning experience, that's completely true. And in these competitions, only one person wins. In Paris, I finished fourth and I was very happy, too. And some people criticized me, saying that a fourth-place finish shouldn't be celebrated, that I won the chocolate medal. And they don't realize that I was a novice at the Games, compared to other participants. It was a new situation; I was under pressure. And the fact that I was a finalist, qualifying first in the preliminary round, is already a success.

Furthermore, you've also won team gold... Of course, you're a very good generation, with Fátima Gálvez playing at a very high level...

— Four years ago, the Federation took a chance on young people. And it's paying off. I joined the training center in Granada in 2021, when four of us young guys got together here. Now the results are coming in, and for the first time, Spain has finished ahead of Italy in a World Championship. Italy is where Olympic shooting originated, where it's best nurtured, and where athletes have far more resources than we do. And for us to beat them with an average age of 24 is incredible.

Olympic shooting requires intense concentration. Everything is decided in seconds; you need to react and hit your target. When you're out there shooting, what goes through your mind?

— Absolute concentration. In fact, I've never felt as focused as I did this time in the World Championships. You have to be 100% in control of what you're doing, your body, your emotions... You know those idiots who are so focused they only look where they're supposed to? Well, we're a bit like that, focused on where we need to look and react. To work on it, I sometimes do yoga. But also a lot of physical exercise and recreating similar situations. My more experienced teammates tell me that before the 2012 London Olympics, psychology played a very minor role in sports, and that afterward it really took off in shooting. Before, many people didn't understand that you have to work on things psychologically to win.

Would Mar in 2021 have imagined that she could be a world champion?

— Honestly? No. In fact, when I started here, I didn't think I'd make it to Paris. My coach was sure of it, but I wasn't so sure. When I won my first World Cup in 2023, I started to believe it. And that's how I made it to the Games—a dream come true.

A dream that begins with your father.

— My father used to hunt and he loved going to village fairs to shoot at the rides. I would go with him, and one day I asked to try it. We'd come back with hams and cheeses we'd won. Now, I made it clear to him that I didn't want to go hunting. I can't even kill a fly. I like shooting, but I don't like hunting. My mother didn't like it either, because I was going straight for music. She worried because she saw me giving up music, even though I was already studying traditional music at El Tecler, a school in Tarragona, where I played the gralla. I had to choose between music and shooting. And when I won the European Championship in 2018, that's when I told my mother that I would always carry music with me, but that I would leave school. I really liked the feeling of striving and pushing myself. I think my mother held onto the hope that I would return to music until the Paris Olympics, when she realized I wouldn't make it, but she saw me happy.

The father, on the other hand, must have experienced it with passion.

— He's my biggest fan, my dad. And even if I didn't achieve these results and finished near the bottom, he'd still be there to help. When I was 14, he started to see, talking to coaches, that I could have a career and he gave everything to help me.

Is the dream now a medal at the 2028 Games?

— Every athlete dreams of going to the Games, and a medal would be my lifelong dream. Just imagining it gives me goosebumps. Right now, I want to enjoy what I have, because winning a World Championship at this age is already incredible. I'm still rubbing my eyes in disbelief.