The Catalan half-Scottish who walks fast better than anyone in Europe

Barcelona“I’m still amazed when I see my face in As”. That’s what Pereza sang in the song Princesas and that’s what Paul McGrath (Barcelona, 2002) still thinks. The Catalan athlete won his first gold medal on Saturday at the European Race Walking Half Marathon Championship in Birmingham. At just 24 years old, it’s his third medal after the European silver achieved in Rome (2024) and the world bronze in Tokyo (2025). “Suddenly I find myself here. In three years, I’ve been to the Olympics and won world and European medals. It’s a bit scary, but I had always dreamed of this and it motivates me immensely to continue,” he confesses to ARA.

During the meters leading up to the finish line, McGrath looked back a couple of times to make sure the gold would be his. “First you feel relief and then a joy of being with my friends, with the coach, the family… They are seconds of different feelings that you don’t quite understand, but it’s happiness,” he recalls about the moment he crossed the finish line to hang the gold medal, and assures that the first people he thought of were his parents. “They are the ones who trust me the most”.

Despite his youth, McGrath is aware of all the effort required to compete for the best marks. “I wouldn't say it's a sacrifice because I enjoy training, but I know that to get results you have to do things that are not usual, like being away from home for many months or having less social life. I know these are things you have to do to be able to perform at your best,” he points out. Furthermore, the Barcelona native also explains a piece of advice a psychologist gave him two years ago that made him change his perspective: “He told me that the most important thing in my career was not the medals or the experiences, but enjoying every day doing something I dreamed of as a child and that I am making a reality. One day all this will end.”

From Gavà to Paris and with his mind on Los Angeles

McGrath started doing athletics at the age of eight. “I was at the Gavà Athletics Club and we had to do everything; long jump, sprints, race walking… At nine or ten years old, I did a race walking competition and came fifth without any training. I had never been in any other discipline. I told my coach that if I prepared better, I thought I could be champion of Catalonia. A year later I was, and I decided that race walking was my discipline – he recalls–. I am a very competitive person, I like to win, and I found my place in the world of sport”. That was the beginning of a lifestyle; "why run if you can walk fast?".

One of his first great achievements came in 2024, when he participated in the Paris Olympic Games. McGrath, however, left with mixed feelings. “I arrived in brutal shape and couldn't meet expectations. I finished the Paris Olympics and was only thinking about Los Angeles. During these four years there are many important competitions, but they don't motivate me as much as Los Angeles. It's my masterpiece, just as artists spend years painting a work, I want to go to Los Angeles 2028 and do it as best as possible”. The Catalan admits that in Paris he struggled to manage his nerves and expectations, but that now he arrives with more experience and better prepared. In the French capital, he finished seventeenth in the twenty-kilometer race walk.

A curious hobby

With a Catalan mother and a Scottish father, McGrath is a fan of Glasgow Celtic football club. “It’s the only thing my father insists on. It didn’t matter to him if I was also a fan of Barça or Madrid, or just Celtic. My paternal family are members and, for me, it has always been great to support a team that wasn’t Catalan or Spanish. I was the strangest football fan for supporting an outside club, but I’m proud of it. It’s a team with a lot of history that has ideals very similar to what I want to be,” he confesses.

Besides his athletics career, McGrath is finishing his journalism degree. “I would like to continue being involved in the world of sport, but first I want to graduate to also have a plan B. With race walking it’s ten or fifteen years, but afterwards we don’t have the money of a footballer, who can retire for life,” he explains, although he assures that he can currently live off sport. “Race walking is a very results-oriented discipline, as long as there are results there are incomes”.