David Meca offers motivational training to students from San Bartolomé de Tirajana

 

The world open water record holder David Meca offered a motivational talk this Monday to 650 students from high schools in the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, in two conferences organized by the Departments of Education and Youth at the Maspalomas Cultural Center. It is the first time that the athlete, now retired from official competition, offers personal improvement training to such young people.

 

The Spanish swimmer, 28-time world champion, with more than 100 international titles, awarded the gold medal by the International Olympic Committee, member of the United States Hall of Fame, awarded the Royal Order of Sports Merit and considered by the International Swimming Federation as the best long-distance swimmer of all time, focused his talk on the values ​​of sacrifice, perseverance, challenges and enthusiasm, but above all on challenges.

 

“Don't let anyone tell you that you are not capable. A champion is not born, he is made. With perseverance, effort and enthusiasm you can get where you want to go,” she said after saying that she started swimming when she was 5 years old to strengthen his body. She wore orthopedic boots and irons on her legs, she had problems with a deviated back, ears... she didn't even have teeth because of the medication she received. I didn't want to swim and I cried every day they took me to the pool. Today I thank my parents and the doctors. The child with physical limitations surpassed all of his limitations,” she narrated. “When the currents are not favorable, it is time to grit your teeth and swim harder. Banish the I can't, forget the I don't want to. Success is only for those who seek it,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

David Meca maintains that “you can always improve and go a little further. If you can imagine it you can achieve it. Only you set the limits. You will always have new challenges to overcome. You decide where you want to go. If you try hard you will be able to achieve feats that others thought impossible. Be your own hero, that in the end you can look back and be proud to say: challenge achieved.”

 

Meca, which was presented by the delegate councilor Esther Delgado Sánchez, insisted that “effort and perseverance are pillars of life.” As an example, I say that he trained 8 hours a day in three water workouts and one physical workout, and for that he got up every day at 4:40 in the morning. “Each training day I did 20 to 25 kilometers of swimming,” she said. The sum of all the training and all the competitions carried out throughout his life amounts to three and a half swimming laps around planet Earth. “Imagine the number of kilometers I carry on these shoulders, undone like those of a 90-year-old man,” she said.

 

Meca also spoke about the sacrifice to the young students of the IES Faro, El Tablero-Aguañac, Amurga, Támara, and the sports modules of these centers. “Without him you can't achieve anything in life,” and she exemplified this with his migration to the United States at the age of 18, to find a life. “I was already champion of Spain in pool events, but I wanted to be internationally recognized, and in the US there were all the rivals who would make me improve.” He said that he left with an English dictionary and 50.000 pesetas (300 euros) in his pocket. It wasn't easy for him. He taught Spanish, cleaned houses, took care of children… “Thank goodness I made that decision. There I graduated in Architecture and Economics and they made me a world swimming champion,” he said.

 

The challenges

 

Talking to the students about values ​​was only a decoy, because his message was intended to motivate them about personal challenges. “We all need to have challenges in life, goals that make us get up in the morning with enthusiasm,” she said, and spoke of hers “as the best thing that has happened to me.” 

 

He acknowledged that his first challenge was to demonstrate and fight against the accusations of alleged doping made against him by the International Swimming Federation. “I did it the best and only way I knew how, which was by swimming.” That challenge went around the world. It was the beginning of his sports career doing sports challenges. In September 1999 he swam the 6 kilometers that separate the prison island of Alcatraz and the city of San Francisco. And he did it with shackles on his feet. 

 

Meca realized that with that challenge “he was innovating, and that in life you have to innovate, do different things to differentiate yourself from the competition. It is true that the world champion medals gave me honor and prestige, but the challenges gave me notoriety and publicity, and sponsors like bananas from the Canary Islands, who supported me for 10 years.”

 

Meca said that the sponsors and communicators did not care if he won world championships, and that he continued winning medals representing his country. “They asked me to do a more difficult challenge every year. And each time we did better and more difficult challenges”, such as the crossing between La Gomera and Tenerife, the world record of the English Channel between England and France, also the Strait of Gibraltar between Europe and Africa, or the crossing of Lake Ness, among others. But he was arrested during the swim from Santa Cruz de Tenerife to Las Canteras Beach. 

 

 

 

 

“That 110 km journey that started as an idea, amidst laughter, at a dinner, in the end became a reality.” It was a challenge and a world record, on May 30, Canary Islands Day. He did it with a 2 millimeter thick neoprene suit, very flexible for the millions of strokes he had to take, but also with a failure in the seams, which hurt his armpits and neck until they bled. He accomplished the feat in 23 hours and 50 minutes. “It was crossing the Las Canteras bar and seeing the animation of the people and I started to fly when I couldn't take it anymore. Everything is the mind. “I realized that the most dangerous sharks are in our minds.” 

 

Meca recognizes that that challenge “was worth it. If he died today I would do so as a happy man, as a man who set a difficult challenge for himself and fought to achieve it. It was the most beautiful sporting challenge I have done in my sporting career. You can't imagine how much I cried in the water, because of the fatigue, the pain, the vomiting, the wounds, the cold, the heat. The reality was much harsher than what I can convey to you,” he said.

 

The medals

 

To talk to the young people about motivation, Meca showed the students several photos and some of the medals he achieved throughout his sporting life. Among them the two that he won in the Olympic championship held in Barcelona, ​​and that have rested on his nightstand since then; the four he achieved at the World Championships in Hawaii, where he became the first and only swimmer to have won four medals in the same championship so far. And his last gold medal in a world championship. “I got it when it was said that he was already older and that he didn't train like before. Thank goodness he went to my last championship, to show them that he was not as old as they said. Because I also managed to break the world record in an official test. That is why they never say that you are old, neither at 30 nor at 80, because if we work, we make an effort and we really want it, it can be achieved.”

 

Luck, enthusiasm and success

 

Meca highlighted that “of all the means that lead us to be lucky, the most important and the ones that do it best are perseverance and work, because the more you train and work, the luckier you are,” he stated. He also spoke of illusion as the driving force of all motivation. “Effort, perseverance, sacrifice... everything comes from enthusiasm. If I arrived at Las Canteras Beach it was because there was excitement. This kept me from stopping in the middle of the trip when I was stung by jellyfish or vomiting. “I decided not to get on the boat because I thought that if I abandoned the first time I would do it again more times,” he stated.

 

He also alluded to success. “He never knocks on the door. It is only for those who seek it. If you love what you do you will end up succeeding in the end. Success does not depend on talent but on the attitude that you put every day to the things you do, to each challenge. Attitude makes people different,” he stated.

 

Davíd Meca concluded his talk by stating that “to become a world champion you are not born a superhero. A good athlete, a good student, a good father or mother, a good teacher, any successful person in life, is not born, it is made with effort, perseverance, sacrifice, and always with the enthusiasm and passion that is put into it. things".