The fastest Catalan wants to make World Championship history.
The sprinter from Vallecas breaks records that had been held for 35 years by combining athletics with her medical studies.
BarcelonaNo Catalan athlete has ever run at the speed of Jaël-Sakura Bestué Ferrera (Barcelona, 2000). The athlete trained at the Muntanyec Club in Sant Cugat del Vallès is having the best year of her sporting career, reminiscing and dreaming of standing on the podium at the World Championships in Tokyo. A few months ago, she achieved the Spanish record for the 200 meters in athletics at the European Championships, a mark she had not surpassed for 35 years. The previous record was held by Sandra Myers in 1990. Jaël's time of 22.19 seconds was the best time for a European athlete of the year. A time that would have given her a medal in the 200 meters at the Tokyo Games. She is also part of the 4x100m relay team, which has a chance of winning a medal. The Spanish relay team arrives with the fourth best time at the World Championships. And she, with the ninth-fastest time in the 200 meters. This Wednesday, she'll be looking to make the final.
Historically, Catalan and national athletics hasn't excelled in speed events, unlike in race walking or middle distance. But in recent years, the situation has changed. At the World Championships, only Sandra Myers, an American with a Spanish passport, had managed to reach the podium with a bronze in the 400 meters in 1991. But Bestué seems to be made of a different material. A girl who fell in love with athletics in education classes at the Joan Maragall school in Sant Cugat del Vallès, where she lives with her mother, a social worker in Cerdanyola del Vallès. Her father is from Equatorial Guinea. Her mother is Catalan. And she, a spunky girl who could have opted for music, since she studied for many years at the Conservatory, where she learned to play the saxophone and piano. But her older sister, Ella Bestué, was an athlete, and her teachers told Jaël she had potential too. So she joined the Muntanyenc Club and never stopped. The achievements, medals, and scholarships followed, and she enrolled at the CAR (Car of Medicine) in Sant Cugat, close to home. But she didn't stop studying medicine. She's almost finished. "Sometimes it's hard to balance studying with getting the scores, but I'm doing well," she explains.
For years, Jaël has been reaching levels no local athlete had ever reached before. She was already a world runner-up in the U-18 category in 2017, but then faced injuries. She underwent hip surgery and had to strengthen her heart. "What I've been through has made me stronger and made me grow," said the young woman who turns 25 next week before flying to Japan. By 2020, Jaël had already recovered and qualified for her first Olympic Games, those during the pandemic, precisely at the World Championships stadium in Tokyo. Although she improved her personal best, she didn't make it past the first round: she was 20 years old. In 2023, she was one step away from breaking Myers' 1990 Spanish 100-meter record. Furthermore, the first Catalan became a finalist in the 60-meter race at a European Indoor Championships. She kept winning medals at the Spanish and European championships. She was improving her times, but at the Paris Games things didn't go as she'd hoped: she failed to qualify through the semifinals in the 200 meters and was eliminated with the Spanish team in the first round of the 4x100m.
This year is different. In addition to setting a Spanish record in the 200 meters, she shone at the World Relay Championships held in China, when the Spanish 4x100m team won silver behind the British, beating the Jamaicans in both the semifinals and the final. Bestué and the rest of the team formed by Esperanza Cladera, Paula Sevilla, and Maribel Pérez were faster than a relay team with women like Shericka Jackson or the eternal Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. "At those World Championships, we saw all the work we'd done. We were also prepared for the Games, but sometimes things don't go the way you'd like," she explains. "I'm at my best now. Before, I wouldn't have imagined achieving these times. I'm where I wanted to be, among the best," she reflects.