Queralt Castellet: Seeking a medal against rivals who weren't even born when you made your Olympic debut

BarcelonaWhen Queralt Castellet (Sabadell, 1989) made her Olympic debut, she was still in high school and preparing for Catalan literature exams during training sessions. The young woman from the Vallès region qualified at the last minute for the half-tube event. snowboardSurprisingly, she performed well despite having less experience than the other competitors. That debut was back in 2006, at the Turin Games, on the Bardonecchia track. Twenty years later, Castellet is participating in her sixth Olympic Games in the same setting, the Italian Alps, although a bit further east, in Livigno. "Returning to the Games in the Alps has brought back so many memories. I still feel the same excitement; I have butterflies in my stomach from nerves. It was in Turin in 2006 when I knew for sure that I wanted to win an Olympic medal," she explains. And, in fact, she already has her medal, the one she won four years ago in Beijing, when she became the first Catalan athlete to win an Olympic medal at a Winter Games, taking silver in the half-pipe. Four years later, she can add a second medal in tonight's final, where she will face rivals who, in many cases, weren't even born when she debuted at the Games in 2006, such as 16-year-old Shimizu Sara of Japan. Queralt is the only European finalist in a sport dominated by Asian and American athletes, but she arrives optimistic after reaching the podium at the last X Games in a final against the same rivals.

"All my Games have been unique and special, incomparable to one another. The first ones I had were in Turin, and I've come here now with the same enthusiasm, with the same focus I have on snowboarding, with my passion. Games," explains a woman who left home young to live where there's snow, since there isn't a single ski slope in the Pyrenees. Castellet has become a wanderer who has lived in New Zealand and travels back and forth, and has become a true icon of this spectacular sport where you have to ski down a slope with side ramps that allow you to perform jumps and tricks scored by the judges. A long career that began when her parents would take the car from Sabadell to the Pyrenees to ski, a time when she discovered snowboarding. snowThey were a new trend arriving in Catalonia that captivated this young girl who had done rhythmic gymnastics because she couldn't sit still. Chasing her dream, she has endured injuries, falls, and devastating blows, such as the death of her coach and partner, Ben Jolly, in 2015. Castellet had met him in Wanaka, New Zealand, and they began working together. He convinced her to spend half the year in southern New Zealand and half in the United States. But in 2015, just as Castellet was experiencing a peak in her athletic career, Jolly was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Overcoming these setbacks, Castellet has never stopped being competitive in a sport with increasingly younger rivals. Twenty years ago, she was the youngest. Now she's the veteran. This year, she hopes to relive the feelings of 2022, when "winning a medal was very special." "It was what I'd been chasing for a long time, and I couldn't achieve it. In Beijing, I did it, I completed the round I wanted, and for me, it was a huge satisfaction, a tremendous achievement," explains a woman who laments the lack of facilities in the country. And all this without closing the door on continuing to compete in the future, despite being one of the most veteran athletes. "I'm not thinking about retiring, I'm thinking about next season, but it's true that I'm not sure where I'll be in four years," she says, referring to the 2030 Winter Games. For now, she is already the first woman to participate in six different Winter Games with the Spanish delegation, reaching five consecutive finals in the middleweight event. She only missed the final of the 2010 Vancouver Games, although she had qualified, but was injured in a previous training session after a fall.

In Livigno, Queralt will be looking for her second medal with the support of her people, her family, who have come to support her. "Having them is special; without them, I wouldn't have gotten here," she says. In the preliminary round, she made her jumps, finishing seventh and giving her a shot at the podium. Anything can happen when Queralt descends the halfpipe.