The Faces of Defeat

Aauri Lorena Bokesa after her race

KAZAN – It is easy to say ‘congratulations’. We do it constantly, sometimes by impetus, unconsciously. We say congrats at weddings, for school marks, for successes at work. We do it with winning athletes, and it is easy to find the word to thank their effort and wish them the best: ‘congratulations’.

However, finding words to comfort a defeat is complicated. Almost in the equator of the Young Reporters’ Programme, I have collected some experiences, journalistic advices and conversations with my mates and, ultimately, the normal incidences involving adventures like this. But over all these experience, I think, two stories lived yesterday will prevail.

Until now, I had never faced two athletes recently defeated in a mixed zone. In the Central Stadium of Kazan, practically at the same time, two competitions with Spanish athletes finished: women’s 400 meters and men’s high jump. I made up my mind that any of the two Spanish competitors would get a medal in their respective finals, so I prepared interviews with general questions about the Universiade, their future plans, etc. With a camera and a notebook, I waited for the first of them in the mixed zone. Miguel Ángel Sancho, from Valencia, narrowly qualified for the final, and finished in antepenultimate. Relaxed and kind, but a little bit disappointed, he answered without any problem my questions.

Some minutes later, the athletes who ran the women’s 400-meter final, approached the press area. Aauri Lorena Bokesa from the Spanish delegation seemed to be especially tired. She reclined on a fence. Walked for some steps and then, in the mixed zone, next to me, she lied down in the wet floor. And she cried.

My first idea was to call a doctor. Seconds later, I thought about trying to comfort her. Next, about changing my interview … Then, I took the camera and shot the above picture. It wasn’t the best quality, and I should have taken another one, but I asked myself whether it was ethical. After some seconds, or maybe a couple of minutes, she was still standing there, without knowing what to do and hundreds of things crossing my head.

Now, two hours later, I’m still thinking about the photo, although I feel better when I think that the journalists who were in the zone, some of them with years of experience in competitions like the Olympic Games, did not know how to react either. I do not know yet what should be the best option. Maybe I will be able to answer all these questions if I experience such a situation again.

Although it was not pleasant, this is one of the thousands of little lessons, which are making me learn to swim in the ocean of being a sports journalist here at the YRP of the Universiade. One of those situations you will never learn in a classroom of journalism school.

Javier Morales Bolivar/FISU Young Reporter (ESP)