THE SNOWBOARDER QUERALT CASTELLET WINS THE SILVER IN BEIJING 2022
With the snowboard in one hand and the smile of victory on his face, Queralt Castellet shows us that nothing is impossible. While all of Spain slept, in Beijing the Catalan woman won the Olympic silver after a pristine round. With 4 winter games behind her in which she did not excel too much, the snowboarder did not have good memories of her Olympic results. However, his effort and passion for this sport that has accompanied him since he was 6 years old, have made the rider one of the best in the halfpipe modality. A dream come true after a journey of complications.
The first round of the finals arrives and in the Zhangjiakou Genting Snow Park the pressure and nerves of the competitors are in the air. But nothing is too much for the Catalan who already assured that on a technical and mental level she was at her best.
On the other hand, it was Chloe Kim who took the gold with a spectacular exercise especially in the first round, in which she took a lot of advantage over Castellet, who only acquired 69.25 points.
Proof that nothing is written will be the second round. Kim takes advantage of her advantage to stand out and risks in the jumps. However, he fails to keep his balance and falls on the second try. When Castellet appears to give everything with his maximum concentration, he spins in the air like a human top and falls to the ground without moving an inch. It seems like he was born for this!
We reach the third and final round to show who is the best in the halfpipe category. We know that physical effort is key, but the human mind can also play a trick on you. It was what happened to Kim, who, knowing that he had the gold insured, had a bad fall again. The silver was disputed between the Japanese Sena Tomita and Queralt Castellet. Tomita risks too much to get the money and falls to the ground. Castellet marks a last round without mistakes and with the second best score (78.25) reaches silver. Beijing 2022 gives images such as the touching embrace of the three snowboarders that demonstrates values such as humility and effort, as well as the emotion of sharing the same sport. Congratulations to all three of you!
He began the games championing the Spanish Olympic team, Turin, Vancouver, Sochi and Pyeongchang are the four Olympic competitions in which he has participated and has progressively climbed the ranks. Castellet bites the silver in Beijing, becoming the second Spanish woman to win an Olympic medal, after the great Blanca Fernández Ochoa who got bronze in slalom in Albertville 1992.
If you have read our article about Castellet you will know that he was about to leave the snow. However, far from giving up, this year he has achieved successes that he would never have imagined. Podium finishes for Castellet this season have been repeated, first with bronze at the Aspen World Championships, in December finishing second in the Dew Tour tournament at Cooper Mountain and in January repeating this position in the halfpipe at the X Games. A whole journey that has culminated in the medal of the Winter Olympic Games, the highest award that every Olympic athlete dreams of achieving.
SNOWBOARDING SAVED HER
In an interview Castellet tells us about his feelings after the first round "After that first round, I got all nervous. All the pressure has appeared, all the thoughts of how important this is for me have come to me and, nevertheless, I think that a force from I don't know where has also come to me to get this round that I have been working for so long. It has come out and with this they have given me the second place".
If you know his story, you will know that the strength he is talking about is that of his former coach and ex-partner who knew that one day Castellet would be among the best. The loss of her boyfriend Ben was very hard and she went months without picking up a board. The snowboarder says that when she returned to the snow she was happy and now she had an even bigger reason to keep fighting. At the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, manages to honor Ben with silver .
"Hopefully soon I will be able to look at the sky from the top of a podium and dedicate my successes to it. Because I will always know that will also be yours", thus closes the story of the great Queralt Castellet.
