From a very young age she wanted to be a footballer, then she did ballet between the ages of 7 and 18, but it was archery when she turned 20 that she tried and, according to her, “fell in love with it”. It is María Fernanda Álvarez Bandala, a 28-year-old Mexican archer who has lived in Lleida since December 2020 and who was close to being an Olympian at the Rio 2016 Games. High-performance sport crossed her life at an age that very few athletes start.
Just two years after starting to practice archery, Mafer, as he likes to be called, has already entered the National Center for High Performance and Sports Talents (CNAR) in Mexico –something similar to the Sant Cugat CAR or the Blume Residence in Spain – where she became one of the best goalkeepers in the country. “In Mexico archery is a national sport and in public educational centers they give free classes. That’s how I started when I entered university together with my brother Derek, who is also a goalkeeper”, explains Mafer, who with the Club Tir amb Arc Lleida has already managed to become champion of Catalonia in the open air this year and second in the Lliga Catalana.
In room it has been bronze in the Catalan and finished the seventeenth in the one of Spain. “I would like to be able to train more and you also have to take into account that I left the bow parked for a long time,” says Mafer, who between her studies (she has a degree in fashion design) and the motherhood that came to her when she just arrived in Spain, in Madrid in 2019, together with her husband with a Catalan mother, could not continue her progression at the highest level. When she still lived in Mexico, where she collected titles, she was one of the three archers called to go to the Rio Games, but due to “bureaucratic issues” she was left out of the Olympic team.
As soon as he can, he will start the process to obtain Spanish nationality and he would like to compete with Spain. Thanks to an agreement between his club and Paeria, he will be able to train in the mornings at the Juanjo Garra pavilion. “I have to take advantage of the hours that I don’t work as a mom,” he concludes.
