Our soccer players | THE VIEWER

It was a woman who, at the beginning of this century, at the Sydney Olympics, for the first time in Colombian history, won a gold medal: María Isabel Urrutia, in a prejudiced male sport: weightlifting. And out there, overcoming the taboo, women were deployed in all sports: Mariana Pajón, Catherine Ibargüen, Leidy Solís, Jackeline Rentería, Ubaldina Valoyes, Yuri Alvear, Íngrit Valencia, Mábel Mosquera, Sandra Lorena Arenas and María Luisa Calle . The pioneer in these victories, in the 20th century, in Barcelona 92, was the athlete Ximena Restrepo, when she won a bronze in the 400 meters. In Atlanta 96 we passed blank, but since Sydney 2000, lighting up the millennium, when Urrutia seemed to rise like a feather hoisted by the enormous weight, no Olympic call passed without our women going, collecting their medal and returning laureates: Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. All these heroines accomplished their feats in individual sports: weightlifting, boxing, judo, wrestling, triple jump, athletics and cycling. It is no coincidence that it is young Afro-Colombian women who have risen to the podium in sports with strong body contact. The biography of each athlete has a lot to do —almost everything— with the aesthetic discipline that they refine and perfect by embracing the Olympic ideal. Is there, perhaps, a show of muscles and reflexes more sublime than judo or wrestling, when two humans knot their bodies in a ring? There is something more than fair play in those sports and it is the return to a nature that is stylized, civilized and plays fair with the opponent. And how about the strides of Ibargüen, who seemed to levitate, like a cheetah or a deer, in a length of 15 meters? And the grace to fall, kicking up earth with your heels, and then rise to your feet to raise your hands victoriously? They are just seconds that seem like very short eternities.

Now the turn is for the U-17 soccer players. I cross my fingers and bite my nails so that they won yesterday. But even if not, in which case they will bring the silver for the house, it is enough. This is one of the episodes in which globalization congratulates: they offered a show in front of the Spanish team, in India, a country that until recently held the ungrateful title of those with the highest number of femicides in the world. A country in which women have been achieving great feats —in sports, art, academia and computing—, despite patriarchal despotism. Yesterday’s match, starring post-adolescent girls —ours and the Iberian ones—, marks a milestone in the history of India, Colombia, Spain and the world, and will greatly influence the repeal of universal misogynistic prejudices.

For example, here in Colombia, soccer managers —already sent to pick up— have been cavalier and sexist with women’s soccer for a long time, but these young women from our team left them dumbfounded. And it is that, in addition, this U-17 team, popular to the core and qualifying Colombian sport, reached the final —that is already a great start— in a collective discipline, a modality in which Colombia has won the fewest awards in its history. sports history. Something must be changing in this country.