Marta Serrano bounced around in the mixed zone and only moved when she saw on the monitors that her two training partners, first Carolina Robles and later Irene Sánchez-Escribano, suffered the same fate as they did in the 3,000m semi-finals of the World Cup in Budapest. Nobody made it. Neither the rookie Serrano, nor the brave Sánchez-Escribano, nor the third, Robles, who left the track with a swollen foot after being trampled by Emma Coburn.
Serrano is only 20 years old and although he failed to triumph in Budapest on another hot and humid afternoon by the river, he is the future of the event in Spain. You can get to know Marta Serrano, the talent that abounds, by watching her walk alongside the best in the world (“Yeah, yeah, I saw that on TV,” she said), or you can do it by observing them carefully for a while. And then you see a tattoo on her arm that reads “I’m mine,” which made her remind herself that, especially as a child, she was a person who cared too much about others and too little about herself . Her sister Ainhoa, who is also an athlete and lives in Zurich, told her that she needed to think a little more about herself. “And that’s why I tattooed it. I have some small tattoos that my sister did for me.”
Marta Serrano lives in the present and shows her face in an anticipated scenario. At the beginning of the year he looked at the calendar and thought that a nice summer awaited him. His last competition was the absolute Spanish championship at the end of July. He had the whole of August ahead of him. Beach, friends, laughter… life. But it was only in the last race that she was crowned Spanish champion. That day, in Torrent, she defeated her two groupmates Irene Sánchez-Escribano and Carolina Robles, the dominators of this discipline, and reached the minimum for the World Cup with a mark that makes her the sixth Spaniard of all time over 3,000m obstacles.
His goal that year was the European Under-23 Championships, where he won a bronze medal, but it didn’t fill him out. But this 20-year-old girl is so talented, she walks so lightly, she has so much strength, the punch of her nails thunders after her rivals, that those around her are left speechless. “If the circumstances arise and everything goes well, I think Marta can be a nine-minute woman,” explains Antonio Serrano, her father and coach, of a brand that even Marta Domínguez, the national record holder (9: 09.39 minutes), could not achieve. Convicted of doping and that would allow her to compete for medals in major international competitions.
Marta is the daughter of Antonio Serrano and Natalia Aspiazu, long-distance runners from the ’80s and ’90s who became international through a broken marriage. He became a coach and she became a scientist and researcher. Antonio wants to take advantage of the girl’s athletic talent; Natalia, her intelligence. But of course there is also a father who, at the age of 58, has just found out that the most talented athlete ever was sleeping at home.
The little girl from the Serrano has already been eliminated from the World Cup, but has one consolation: she wants to get enthusiastic about athletics, about her passion, her obsession. “I love it. All my life I have been surrounded by athletics. Since I was little, the family outing was to the city where my father was with his athletes. I was at the London Games, at the European Games in Barcelona , last year, with the ones in Munich. There are times when I also need a bit of a change. I’m young and have to switch off, because since my father is my coach and I live with him, it’s sometimes difficult for me. Me need to isolate myself a bit.
Marta lived with her mother, but last year she realized that she was wasting a lot of time attending the University of Alcalá de Henares, where she studied Health Biology. So he left and enrolled in Complutense University for Occupational Therapy. Since the Complu and CAR are closer to his father’s house, he has moved to where they spend the day talking about athletics. Marta has an obsessive point. “If she had her way, despite the fact that she’s 20 years old, she would devote herself to training and recovering, and that can’t be. You have to push him to go out to dinner, to meet friends, to go to the cinema…”. But it’s not just sports. “If he gets a nine in college, he doesn’t get a seven,” says his father. And in training he loves to push himself. And in the gym, between exercises and exercises, although no one ordered it, he falls to the ground and starts doing sit-ups. “I’m a very demanding person and I like to do everything well, but in athletics, in my studies and in everything.” It’s my personality.
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