Nearly a hundred athletes between the ages of 14 and 18 live in the Galician Sports Technology Center, in Pontevedrawhere they train to be the best in an olympic discipline. Together with them they also prepare young people who compete at the highest Galician, Spanish or European levelwho, although they no longer live in the center, attend the sessions daily with their teammates and coaches.
Galician sport has in the CGTD the reference facility for its competitive excellence and the results of its athletes They show all the work that is done in sports from the Xunta de Galicia, owner of the center. The Second Vice President and Minister of the Presidency, Xustiza e Deportes, Diego Calvo, assures that when he took over the area in May he was “pleasantly surprised” to learn in depth about the work that is carried out in the center, both at a sports level and at a social level. “The CGTD is a national benchmarknot only for the proven successes of athletes, but for everything that encompasses for young people the experience of living and studying with other young people like themsince this center is for comprehensive training”.
The General Secretary for Sport, José Ramón Lete, highlights the successes of the 12 sports disciplines that are worked on at the center, from which “they come out year after year great athletes who achieve some of the most important achievements of Galician sport”. He points out that, “in this 2022, Galicia has achieved its first international badminton medal with Lucía Rodríguez and Nikol Carulla; we have a gymnast European Champion as Melania Rodríguez; Iván García and Laura Martínez have been proclaimed runners-up in the world taekwondo and junior; and from the satellite centers for canoeing in Verducido and sailing in Vilagarcía, a brilliant season with more than a hundred international medals in the case of canoeing”. For Lete, “the goal is for Galicia’s technical development to continue to grow and for this we have created the Specialized Sports Training Centerswhich are already working”.
The dynamics of the center is simple but effective and is based on the reconciling sports and academic performance. This is how Suso López, director of the center for six years, explains it, when he began to work as head of the only training center at this level in the community. According to him, this appointment was an “almost natural” step, after several years as a teacher at the Sánchez Cantón instituteattached to the center.
This is precisely the reason why Suso highly values the academic performance, which for him is the fundamental pillar on which CGTD students should focus their education. “The problem with Olympic sports, which are the ones that are trained here, is that they do not usually generate enough to live off of them“, he says. He speaks, for example, of Javier Gómez Noya, who has already explained on several occasions to the students of the center that, despite being one of the most successful Spanish triathletes of all time, “he will not be able to live on what he has earned once he retires: these sports are not like football, for example”.
For this reason, since she began directing the center, Suso López advocates that athletes combine your training with the studyin addition to “force them” to maintain an active social and family life. Every weekend, says López, “the minors are sent home, it is very important that they do not lose the bond with their family”, something that also helps them psychologically disconnect from very intense weeks of study and sport.
In this task of “placement” of the athletes after their competitive stage, the Athlete Assistance Officedeveloped by the General Secretariat for Sport, which is already underway and which, thanks to different agreements with expert psychologists, universities and the Ministry of Employment and Equality Promotion, informs, guides, detects needs, proposes resources and tools, promotes performances and attends to high-level Galician athletes in their dual career. Diego Calvo highlights the importance of this office since “complete the circle of accompaniment that we started from the Xunta with grassroots sports, professional sports and, now, the retired athlete, who still has a lot to contribute with his experience.”
Training, studying and socializing: the keys to sporting success
The day to day in the CGTD is intense, exhausting for those who do not know how an athlete works of Elite. “Classes at the institute start at 8:00 a.m., with a break for the first training session at 10:30 a.m.,” explains Suso López. After an hour and a half they shower and go back to class until lunchtime. “In the afternoon there is another two-hour training sessionafter which it is compulsory for them to study”, he says: “after dinner at 8:00 p.m. they study again until silence falls at 11:00 p.m. In the residence”.
With the day fully planned, the boys and girls in the center have no time other than to focus in what is most important to them: studies and sports. “Many feel that they train less than in their clubs of origin, but the reality is that there are usually more hours at the end of the day, with the difference that we separate it into two sessions,” says López. “Besides, we put sports and academic performance at the same levelBecause if they repeat the course, their scholarship will be taken away and they will not be able to continue training at the CGTD the following year.”
In this way, they encourage continue to maintain a good academic level, they are already required to receive the scholarship in the first place. “When they finish high school, we no longer force them to continue studying, they are of legal age, but we We remember that it is difficult to maintain yourself financially depending on the competition in an Olympic sport: we always recommend that they have options beyond their sports career”. The director insists a lot on this because, he says, he has seen how athletes “have had to reinvent themselves away from sport by stopping competing“, so it is important to “have a plan B”.
On the other hand, they are prepared for the highest level competition, taking into account the abilities, qualities and performance of each athlete. “We demand that the federations and coaches have a good projectthat take boys and girls into account and that they do not limit themselves to seeking sports performance: in Galicia we were guilty of having very good junior athletes who did not win so many titles when they left the CGTD, for this reason we value a good plan that teaches them to be good sportsmen in the long run.
Road to High Performance
The CGTD has been running for decades, because, as its director explains, “it was already a sports center during the Franco regime.” After several remodeling and adaptations of both its sports and educational facilities and, of course, the rehabilitation of the residence module, the current center aspires to become a High Performance Center authorized by the Higher Sports Council, of which there are only four in Spain (the Joaquín Blume Residence in Madrid, the CAR of Sant Cugat del Vallés in Barcelona, the CAR of León and the CAR for high altitude training in Sierra Nevada).
“We already have facilities for train twelve Olympic disciplines, a residence, an institute of Secondary Education, smedical, nursing and physiotherapy services and nutritionists“, explains Suso López, “we are preparing to be a CAR and we are getting closer to achieve it”. Likewise, many of its athletes belong to the national teams of their disciplines and have olympic medalists like the pirate Teresa Portela (K-1), world champions like Adrián Sieiro and Manuel Fontán (C-4), the very young artistic swimmer Daniela Suárez or the gymnast Melania Rodríguez, who is already in the race for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
In total, 22 Olympic athletes and 2 Paralympians have passed through the CGTD facilities since Sydney 2000, achieving 11 medals. But it does not stop there: great athletes who participate in European and world championships each year have passed and continue to pass through a center that chooses to continue being a benchmark for Galician and national sports for many more years.
In order to become a CAR, however, they need renovate some of its facilities and have a sports psychologist, something that until now is done with the mediation of the federations. “There are many who hire these professionals on their own, we provide them with contact, references and even the facilities if they need them, but For now we cannot hire him from the CGTD and it is something we will continue fighting for“recognizes López, who understands that these professionals are essential for young athletes to achieve their goals.
