Nil Llop cannot imagine his life without skates. With blades in winter and with wheels in summer. In fact, it never rests. Compete in both disciplines. “Roller speed skating is not Olympic and I think big. There is nothing bigger than a Games, that’s why I started practicing on ice”, he remembers just one year to go before the Beijing Winter Games 2022 (February 4-20).
At just four years old, while he was playing soccer with other children, his two sisters were skating on a rink next door. “I didn’t know how to tell my parents I wanted to skate and ran away one day to try it out. Since then I haven’t taken my skates off.”he says laughing.
On wheels he maintains his file with the Cobra Club. They have a very small track in Prat de Llobregat, that’s why they usually train in a cycling circuit in Sant Boi. They also go up to Montjuic.
At the age of 8 he is already competing, but on ice he started later, “at 14 15”. He is now 18. “I remember the first time I competed the hook on my boot laces broke and we put electrical tape on,” he recalls with a laugh.
The first time I competed the hook on my boot laces broke and we put electrical tape on it “
Nil Llop, speed skater
Llop slides on the ice like a bullet. It can reach 60 km / h, but the lack of facilities in Spain was a great handicap. Last season, the Spanish Ice Sports Federation offered him the opportunity to train at the prestigious Thialf Academy in Heerenveen (Netherlands) alongside four other Spanish skaters for six months. “There this sport is like football here, the stadium is filled to burst. The first time it impressed me a lot,” he explains.
The Netherlands is, along with Russia and Japan, one of the main powers of a sport that in Spain has 29 federated athletes (14 men and 15 women) and whose world record in the distance of 500 meters – Lloplo’s specialty has the Russian Pavel Kulizhnikov (33.61), but on a fast track and in height.
The two seasons that the Catalan has been training there have already begun to bear fruit. At the only two Heerenveen Bubble World Cups, where he was the youngest skater, has broken Spain’s record for speed skating in 500 meters (35: 730). And also, twice in just seven days.
For months, his routine began at 6:30 in the morning, after two hours of skating on the track, distance studies and after eating he had to do weights, technical part and bike for two or three hours.
Speed skating is a very physically demanding sport.“We are all crouched down, like at 90 degrees. It’s like being in constant tension. And then there is the issue of calluses on the feet. The boots are very narrow and they are making callus. During last year’s confinement, unable to skate, I noticed that I lost feeling with skates because by not using them the calluses soften and then the feet hurt more, “he explains. It is a sport in which you have to work with patience because the results are seen in the long term and” the mental part is very important too. , aim.
His goal next season is to drop below 35:50.It is also important to become the first Spaniard to qualify in this discipline for the Games. To do this, they will have to be among the top 25 in the final ranking of the World Cups for the next season and there will be, at most, three for each country. “It’s complicated but I will do everything in my power. My dream is to go to the Games and win a medal,” he says with ambition.
It is difficult to qualify for Beijing 2022 but I will do everything in my power because my dream is to go to the Games one day and win a medal “
Nil Llop, speed skater
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Why Nil is not one of those who cower in the face of challenges, especially after the accident in 2018.. He was training in Sant Boi when, at the exit of a curve, he met a boy in the opposite direction. “Y for not killing him I dodged it and ran into a tree “, remember. The femur, ankle and jaw were broken in four places. Even today he keeps some annoyance as a memory of that. He has learned to live with her.
“What I wear the worst are my feet, I have nails,” he says. A year later he was winning gold at the World Roller Games and in January 2020 he was silver at the Winter Youth Olympic Games. It was a first step towards his Olympic dream.