Ecuador and the sports world are in mourning after the murder of sprinter Álex Quiñónez last Friday in Guayaquil.
Thousands of people came to pay tribute to him during the funerals held this weekend at the Folke Anderson stadium in his hometown, Esmeraldas, in the northwest of the country.
Quiñónez reached third place in the test of 200 World Athletics World Cup in Doha, Qatar , on 2019 and was recognized as the most important sprinter in the history of Ecuador.
Years before that third place, BBC Mundo interviewed him during the London Olympic Games of 2012.
We retrieve an extract from that article in which Quiñónez recounted the pride and nerves of representing his country in this prestigious sporting event.
Álex Quiñónez did not take any medals to Ecuador, but starred in a feat in London 2012 : competed against seven of the fastest men on the planet in the final of the 200 flat meters, a race in which Usain Bolt catapulted himself into the pantheon of Olympic legends.
They were the first Olympics in Quiñónez and he confessed to BBC Mundo that “I was very nervous.”
“I didn’t think about going that far, reaching the final and being among the eight best in the world. ”
In the qualifying round, the athlete had achieved the best time in his test by stopping the timer at 20, 28 seconds.
That performance gave him the ticket to the semifinal, where he ran in the lane that was next to Bolt.
What did it feel like to have him so close? we asked him.
“One could feel fear, but I was more uneasy about the people who looked at me in the stadium and in Ecuador and for what was going to be my development at that time than for having him close. I wasn’t really nervous about going to run against him or having him by my side. ”
“ He is a human being like me, he has the The same things I have and everything he can do can be done by anyone “, he said.
” When you’re there you think: ‘I know he’s the best in the world because he has a great gift, that he knows how to take advantage of it and develop it very well. ‘ But regarding him, I felt normal, I was really nervous about what they would say about my performance, especially the people who have supported me. ”
“When they told me that he had gone to the final, I did not believe it”
In that semifinal, the Ecuadorian came third . Bolt and South African Anaso Jobodwana came first and second respectively.
The Olympic regulations establish that the two winners of each of the semifinals that are disputed go to the final.
However, Quiñónez was also able to contest it by achieving the eighth best time of the three test semifinals.
“When they told me that I had made it to the final, I didn’t believe it. My mother called me and said: ‘Let’s go ahead, everything can be done’. I spoke with my grandmother and she told me to kneel down, to calm down, that tomorrow would be another day and that the hardest part had already passed, ”he recalled.
In the final, Quiñónez was placed in the third lane of the track, next to the Jamaican Yohan Blake, who had just won the medal of silver in the 100 flat meters.
“I remember I was very nervous. I was afraid. But I was not afraid of him or them, I was afraid of the people who were watching me. ”
“ When you enter the stadium, you see a lot of people everywhere. Everybody is looking at you. You ask yourself: ‘What do I do? Do I run away? I’m going?’ and you say, ‘God help me.’ You start to think about a thousand things and you don’t know how to solve them at that moment ”, he indicated.
“But little by little, when you start running, you think that it is possible. Anyone can get there. I put all the desire in the world into him, I put everything I had into him. I felt that I was running alongside all the people who have supported me , I felt that they were saying in my ear: ‘Run, run’ ”.
His experience in the final
Quiñónez recalled the almost absolute silence of the seconds before the starting gun of his career in the final.
“At that moment is when you get more nervous,” he said.
“ Minutes before, you hear all the noise, all the noise, but when you don’t hear anything and you’re at the exit waiting for the gun, you feel all the tension “.
“I began to think that I had to do it for my mother. ‘I have to look good. Diosito help me, help me ‘, I said to myself. ”
“ I had never been so scared in a race as I felt in that one. It is the hardest race I have ever had because there I felt a very strong pressure, I felt something that I don’t know how to explain. I felt the anguish of being there and wanting to get in a good position but not being able to do it. ”
Quiñónez then explained to BBC Mundo his formula to face the nervousness of the seconds before the stretch.
“I started to think about what my coach told me in the qualifying phase and in the semifinal: ‘Go in there and think that you are running alone, there is no one ‘. Every time I ran I closed my eyes and thought: ‘There is no one, there is no one. I can’. But I think I started late to do that. ”
“I wanted to make Ecuadorians feel good”
“From so much thinking , everything went wrong for me. I came out very slow and due to my nerves, I couldn’t show my full potential. I thought that in the final I was going to have a better mark, but because of how nervous I was, I couldn’t function well. ”
We asked him the Ecuadorian sprinter if he had talked with his opponents before the historic race.
“I did not speak with them. I only heard that they were talking to each other and laughing. I was like, ‘What are they saying? I do not understand them’. But I realized that when we were warming up, they were nervous too: Blake, Bolt, the American (Wallace Spearmon), the Frenchman (Cristopher Lemaitre), we were all nervous “.
” There I said to myself: if he (Bolt) who is the best in the world is nervous, imagine how I will be that it is my first Olympiad and that it is the first time I competed against he (…) I had seen him on television, but I had never competed against him. ”
According to Quiñónez, shortly before the In the end, Bolt wished everyone good luck and wished them a good race.
“I was excited and scared at the same time. I wanted to make Ecuadorians feel good, at least for a little while. I wanted to give them a medal. I did my best to get it, but I couldn’t. Hopefully Ecuador is happy for my participation. ”
Lessons
Then the athlete told us the lessons that those Olympics left him.
“I already had the experience, I already know who I am going to compete with. I feel like before coming to London, I needed more international competitions. For example, having come here, to Europe, to rub shoulders with stronger athletes. I realized how important it is to compete abroad to meet other athletes and to really test my level. ”
Quiñónez, who for“ lack of money ” had to retire from athletics for two years and work in masonry, fulfilled his dream of competing in the Olympics.
“I take with me the beautiful experience of having competed, of seeing that many Ecuadorians greet me with affection and that they want to take a photo with me. I thank you for your support. ”
This interview was conducted by BBC Mundo journalist Margarita Rodríguez. The original article was published as part of our coverage of the London Olympics 2012. You can visit it by clicking here.
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