Oriol Cardona wins the gold medal and makes history at the Olympic Games

BarcelonaOriol Cardona from Banyoles lived up to expectations and won the gold medal in the ski mountaineering sprint, a discipline making its Olympic debut. Oriol had known for months that everyone had high hopes for him. So much so that one of his first reactions after his victory was a feeling of liberation. "It's hard to know what to say, I've worked so hard for this medal. I was eager to get this final out of the way, which luckily went very well. When I arrived and knew I was champion... it's incredible," he said. Cardona, a world champion with a formidable track record, won the first Catalan medal at these Games just minutes after Ana Alonso from Andalusia took bronze in the women's category. Cardona and Alonso will be looking for a second medal on Saturday in the pairs event.

The skier from Banyoles dominated the final in Bormio, under heavy snowfall, clearly breaking away from his rivals after the first climb. Russian Nikita Filippov, competing as a neutral athlete, won silver, and Frenchman Thibault Anselment took bronze. Ot Ferrer also participated in the men's final, finishing fifth and earning an Olympic diploma after competing at a high level throughout the day. Maria Costa, a skier from Santpedor, was eliminated in the women's semifinals. "I'm happy to have made my debut at the Olympic Games. There was a lot of snow between the quarterfinals and semifinals, which may have affected the course, especially the top positions. Now it's time to think about the 2030 Games," said the young athlete, who performs well in a sport where Catalans have been doing excellent work for years.

Eighteen years after the first major success in this sport, when a young Kilian Jornet won the World Championship event in Valerette Altiski in February 2008, the first Olympic medal in the sprint event has arrived. For Spanish sport, it is only the second gold medal at a Winter Games, after Paquito Fernández Ochoa's in alpine skiing in 1972. At 31 years old, Cardona has achieved a historic result, since until now the only Catalan medals at the Games were Queralt Castellet's silver in [unclear - possibly "the gold medal" or "the silver medal"]. halfpipe four years ago, and those achieved competing with France by Martin Fourcade in biathlon, six golds and one silver, and by the also northern Catalan Doriane Vidal, winner of a silver in halfpipeIn today's final, by the way, security He has ordered the removal of Catalan independence flags carried by friends and acquaintances of Ferrer and Cardona..

"When I rounded the final bend and saw I was going to win, with everyone cheering, I felt an enormous surge of joy," said Cardona, who emphasized the importance of transitions, where you have to put on and take off your skis. "Two weeks ago, at the Boí Taüll World Cup, my wallet was stolen and I finished second. Since then, I've trained transitions even harder; they're key and decisive factors. You won't win a race in transitions, but you can lose it," he stated. Cardona combined ski mountaineering with trail running when he was young. For years he didn't know if he could be a professional athlete, so he studied exercise science and worked as a forestry assistant, while dedicating his summer months, like his friend and former training partner Kilian Jornet, to trail running. A piano enthusiast, Cardona came to ski mountaineering thanks to his father, Joan, a mountain lover who has climbed Everest twice and took his children up into the Pyrenees whenever possible. In fact, Joan Cardona was a national ski mountaineering champion, a sport also practiced by Nil, Oriol's older brother.

For years it seemed that Cardona would end up focusing on mountain running. But some news is about to change everything. "Knowing that ski mountaineering would be an Olympic sport was key," explains the Banyoles native, who arrived at the Games aware that much was expected of him, as he is the reigning world champion. "If I didn't know how to handle the pressure, I shouldn't be here," he told reporters before the Games. Now he will focus on the pairs event with Ana Alonso, who has had an incredible story of overcoming adversity. In September, Alonso was cycling down from Sierra Nevada when a car hit her, breaking the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee and several other bones. With great effort, he managed to reach Bormio, where he reached the top.

The day that changed the history of Catalan sport is the result of years of work. To understand the current success, one must go back to that time, two decades ago, when Kilian Jornet still combined ski mountaineering with running. Jornet was one of the young athletes selected to enter the high-performance ski mountaineering center founded in 1997 in the Catalan Pyrenees thanks to the drive of Jordi Canals, the Barcelona-born mountaineer who, after participating in expeditions to Everest, gave it all up to care for theskimo (as ski mountaineering is also known), a sport he had fallen in love with. "Kilian showed us the way; we quickly saw that he was special. He took us to the top tier of this sport," Canals often explains. The first results were a victory in the cadet category at the 2004 World Championships, with Jornet and Aleix Pubill as the stars. In 2007, Kilian Jornet, Mireia Miró, and Marc Pinsach triumphed in the European Junior Championships in the relay category.

An agreement with French authorities was key to allowing young people like Jornet to study and train at the Font-romeu center, at 1,800 meters. Winter sports in France have a larger budget, greater support, and a longer tradition, as demonstrated by the six gold medals won by the northern Catalan biathlete Martin Fourcade. Being able to train in Font-romeu was crucial for that first group of young athletes, who crossed the national border to train and improve, always with Kilian Jornet as their role model. In 2012, a young man from Banyoles, Oriol Cardona, joined the Font-romeu center. "I remember him, very young, with a great work ethic; you could see he had character," explains Jornet, who recently invited Cardona to Norway, where he lives, to train together and climb peaks, as featured in a documentary by Televisió de Catalunya. "The times I trained with him were an incredible learning experience. He shared all his firsthand knowledge with me. In terms of technique and sportsmanship, he's a genius. He's a very competitive person," Cardona, who was already the European Junior Champion in 2014, said a few days ago.

Jornet, euphoric: "Nobody deserves it more than him."

Jornet was visibly moved by Banyolí's success: "It was incredible to see Oriol win this Olympic gold. First and foremost, for him, as he's a young man with excellent athletic abilities and a truly wonderful person. No one deserves it more than him, since it's incredibly difficult to stay at the top for several years. What he's achieved is truly remarkable," Jornet emphasized, adding that the medal is "a victory for all ski mountaineering globally and also for ski mountaineering here." In the sprint event, versatility is key, as you have to climb, run, and ski downhill, changing skis frequently. In the Olympic event, skiers must ascend approximately 700 meters uphill on a course that involves navigating around structures designed to prevent a straight run, followed by a section of stairs where they must carry their skis on their backs, and then a rapid descent to the finish line. There's a crucial moment just before the descent when skiers must retrieve equipment that aids in the ascent but not in the descent. Today, Cardona demonstrated superior mastery of this challenge.