A singular marcher: the consecration of Sofía - Process

At 18 years old, the walker Sofía Ramos Rodríguez won the gold medal at the Under-20 World Championships in Athletics last August by covering 10,000 meters in 46 minutes 23 seconds 1 hundredth. For years and thanks to the support of her mother and her coach, this accomplished athlete living in an irregular settlement in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl had to overcome countless adversities. Today she feels happy. And he confesses: “I like to play sports. I saw myself in an Olympic Games changing my destiny, I didn't see myself as a normal person”.

MEXICO CITY (apro) On the borders of the Gustavo A. Madero mayor's office and the municipality of Nezahualcóyotl, where the train tracks run, 22 houses made of sheets and wood lined with plastics have been built to prevent rain from entering.

This irregular settlement is known as Localidad 17 de Junio, the date on which a group of paratroopers settled a decade ago. Its inhabitants are garbage collectors and recyclers. The houses and everything inside them are made with the material they pepena. What some people discard, for them is a treasure. There is no running water or pavement, the light comes thanks to some "little devils".

In this area of ​​the Ciudad Lago neighborhood, everyone already knows that apartment 10 is the house of the girl who was on TV because she won a gold medal at the World Under-20 Athletics Championships in Nairobi, Kenya. Between whispers, the neighbors say that this serious girl who always walks everywhere with her mother and her sister is someone important. Now they understand why she always wears sports clothes and sometimes they have seen her walk funny.

Sofía Ramos Rodríguez is already among the elite of Mexican youth marchers. To his recent world title, we must add the silver medal he won at the Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympic Games. He joins the list of Yanelli Caballero (world silver in 2009), Valeria Ortuño (silver at the Buenos Aires Olympic Games, Youth of Nanjing 2014 and bronze in the World Cup for Walking in Rome 2016) and Alegna González (gold in the Under 20 World Athletics Championships in 2018).

“I would never have imagined being in a world championship, much less winning it. I feel proud because it is part of my job, my family, my coach; It is a joint work that I have done. I like to play sports, I saw myself in the Olympic Games changing my destiny, I didn't see myself as a normal person”, says Sofía Ramos.

The economic conditions of the Ramos family were not an impediment for Mrs. Patricia Rodríguez to know that it was important that her two youngest daughters had to play sports. Since Frida and Sofía were little, the woman pulled with her girls on foot to the sports center of the IMSS clinic 23 that is on the San Juan de Aragón and Eduardo Molina streets. By chance they saw a group of marching children in the Bosque de Aragón and Frida suggested training with them.

The Beginnings

Although Sofía liked gymnastics and diving more, her mother couldn't break herself in two. The walking coach Adrián Camacho did not like the girls to practice another sport either, so she recommended that they stay with him only. Little by little, he took Sofia. As she was barely 10 years old, she had light training and then sent her to play. Not that Sofia liked the march, but it was either that or do nothing.

Sacrifice was imposed in Sofía's life: going to school in the morning, running home to change her clothes, eating on the way while walking the 30 minutes to the Bosque de Aragón; train, go home and do homework. Needless to say if the training was in Chapultepec or elsewhere, the girls and their mother were like accelerated little ants that went from one place to another.

“Since we didn't have money for them to have sportswear, I would go to the flea markets for hours, to buy cheap clothes. When he found new clothes or clothes in good condition, he bought them for him. That was my mission in the mornings when they went to school, to go to the tianguis if I raised some money. I was looking for walking shoes, which are shorter and flatter. We ate what we could, I couldn't give them a special meal. I learned to follow a diet by informing myself, but it was as I could."

Sofía Ramos's father sells fruit outside the Morelos metro station. Her mother has spent almost all of her time accompanying her to train, but she got to work when she saw that her daughter's sports career demanded money in her pocket. It occurred to him to prepare food and sell it to the police officers who guarded a property that the airport claims as its own and from which 10 years ago they forcibly evicted all the inhabitants of the Town of June 17.

Sofía hasn't bothered to stretch out her hand either. Since she was little, she went out to sell sweets. He prepared flavored ice pops and there was the girl with her purple chorecito and a smile offering sweets or chacharitas in the tianguis. Growing up, he learned to bake cakes and also sold hamburgers and French fries. From wherever you had to raise money because being a marcher costs.

The first competitions of Sofía Ramos injected walking into her veins. She liked the adrenaline of competing, she discovered that she was good for this discipline and she did not want to let it go, especially when she was detected in the National Olympics and invited to train at the National Center for the Development of Sports Talents and High Performance (Cnar), where he entered at the age of 14.

He joined the team of Professor Pedro Aroche, former coach of Olympic medalist Noé Hernández, whose rule was to start work at 05:30 in the morning. His sister Frida was also invited. In order to arrive on time from Ciudad Lago to Cnar, the girls had to leave their house at four o'clock.

They walked in the dark, among the garbage and debris, filling their tennis shoes with dirt until they reached the stop for the truck that was taking them to the Oceania sports car. At that time, everything was fast because at 20:05 the other truck passed by, leaving them at the Palacio de los Deportes. There, another walk awaited them on Añil street to the Cnar gate.

Tough tests

Sofía's life was like this for a year and a half until the Cnar accepted her as an intern. She could live and study there and on weekends go out to be with her family. With her, the objective was clear: she was the ideal age to prepare for the 2018 Youth Olympic Games.

Pedro Aroche left Sofía and another girl stranded one day in the Desierto de los Leones.

Since they did not complete the training, it was easy for Aroche to punish them, leaving them to their fate to see how they returned to Cnar. Sofía spoke to her mother crying and in the end they asked for a ride to return to the sports facility.

Señora Patricia was wailing with anger and decided she would never train with him again. The National Commission for Physical Culture and Sport asked the coach Ignacio Zamudio to enter the quite and accept Sofía in his group of children. This is how at the beginning of 2018 Sofía Ramos joined the team where Alegna González and Valeria Ortuño stood out among the others.

When Zamudio received it, he discovered its shortcomings. Although she was a girl with physical strength who recovered easily from training, she had a lot to improve. The Youth Olympic Games were Ramos's first international competition. His silver medal was a surprising and outstanding result.

“I expected him to fight for a medal, but I liked the mark he made better. From walking the five kilometers in 23.40 minutes, he dropped to 22.20. It became the second best brand in the world. It revealed the potential it had for the future,” says Zamudio.

In the Youth Olympic Games, the 10,000-meter test took place on the athletics track of the Roca Sports Center park in Buenos Aires. Two competitions of 5 thousand meters each were carried out and the times were added to obtain the winners.

Patricia Rodríguez traveled to South America to accompany her daughter. She couldn't leave her alone, so she asked her eldest children for a loan, money, and worked as a cook in small food restaurants.

“My daughter was an X. In the first competition she started very far back, I was like she couldn't stand me, very nervous. The china passes and Sofía arrived about five or six seconds behind. Nobody expected it. They disqualified the Czech and now my daughter left alone. In the following competition she was third. As the weather was good and added, he was in second place, but when they arranged the list I did not see his name and I said what happened. His mouth was even dry.

“I ran (towards the finish line) because when she finished I had to be waiting for her at the exit because she really liked that I was the first to hug her. And they wouldn't let me in because she had to go to doping. He told them: 'let me go hug my mom'. I cried and she laughed. I am diabetic, I think even the sugar has gone away."

–Wasn't that medal a result you expected?

–I dreamed big. She knew that she trained and that she was very good, but she didn't know if she was going to make it. I went with her because she used to walk everywhere with me. I raised and raised my money to support her. They had asked us for money to get their visa to the United States and we didn't have it, so we threw away; my husband boated with his friends in the flea market and we managed to get the money, but the truth is that the one who has been chartered with her is me.

Champion's Breed

The drama was presented again heading into the U-20 World Championships in Athletics. Sofía Ramos, her coach, told her that she had no budget to make the trip. Patricia Rodríguez did not sit idly by. He contacted the office of the elected municipal president of Nezahualcóyotl, Alfredo Cerqueda Rebollo, and without further ado asked for the money for his daughter's plane ticket.

She also went out to ask the taxi drivers, her acquaintances from the neighborhood, the bread lady who always gave them a piece for Sofía to eat, the girls from the grocery store. Finally the call from the politician arrived with the announcement that they would buy the ticket. Patricia, Sofía and Frida were jumping for joy in their house; They hugged each other and as if they were celebrating the national soccer team. They chanted we're going to the World Cup.

“We saw the competition at my eldest son's house. Frida and I went to stay with him because it started at two in the morning. They posted it on the World Athletics (International Athletics Federation) website, the internet we have is a little box, one of those little boxes, because there is no signal here, so I said let's go because it won't fail me. With my daughter who lives in Los Angeles we connected by cell phone and we showed her the TV”, Rodríguez details.

Since Ignacio Zamudio could not accompany Sofía Ramos –because she was returning from the Tokyo Olympics with Alegna González and did not have a ticket or accreditation and could not comply with the covid-19 protocol that Kenya required– he also had to follow the competition on the World Athletics channel.

A day before, she contacted Ramos to design the competition strategy depending on whether the test would be slow, fast or even if, due to sanctions from the judges, they took her to the pit lane for a minute (the punishment area where a walker enters when he accumulates three red cards).

“Before kilometer five I saw that they were going slowly and she was not going ahead as she had indicated in the plan. She was talking to the television as if Sofia was listening to me. The physiatrist Valentina Cantón who traveled with her was the one who helped me because she was on the track. He told her what Sofia had to know. When I saw that it came unstuck, I waited a couple of laps to see if it was definitive that it was going away on its own, and it was like that. The plan was to get as detached as possible in case she accumulated cards and they sent her to the pit lane when she left, she would be at least a minute ahead of them. He only had one card and the perfect plan came out, he took more than a minute from second place.”

Sofía Ramos Rodríguez, at the age of 18, became the world walking champion. She walked the 10,000 meters in a time of 46 minutes 23 seconds 1 hundredth. She beat the French Maële Biré-Heslouis (47:43.87 minutes) and the Czech Eliška Martínková (47:46.28 minutes).

Family unity

Ignacio Zamudio explains that Sofía Ramos's preparation went hand in hand with that of Alegna González, who in Tokyo 2020 finished fifth in the 20-kilometer race. They practically held the same camps and, despite the pandemic, the marching team did not stop training in sports facilities, roads or any place where there were no people and the athletes were not at risk because they were taken out of the Cnar.

“The expectation was to win that gold medal. Before traveling to Nairobi, she was already first in the world in 20 kilometers and first in 10 kilometers. In the Querétaro National Athletics Championship (May 2021) she finished fourth, closing with Alejandra Ortega, who went to Rio 2016. With that mark, she placed first in the world youth ranking. It was right to resume the training plan and no more time was lost from work”, explains Zamudio.

–How much money have you spent on Sofia's career? – Her mother asks.

–Very much. I don't know how many thousands of pesos. Give it a pencil: we trained daily, we only rested on Sundays. For years.

–When President López Obrador says that athletes win because of the efforts of their families, is he right?

–I'm mad at him because he didn't even mention my daughter in her sporting achievement. Let him say that a girl with limited resources made it. I dedicated myself body and soul to my daughters. If I had other priorities, like watching soap operas, I wouldn't have achieved this. This is a personal result sheltered by his family.

–What things have you stopped buying for yourself or for your house to use the money for Sofía's career?

–Everything. I'm going to be honest, with jobs I bought a TV and everything I have is recycled. I don't have a floor in my room, it's dirt covered with carpet. We barely had the opportunity to put a floor on Sofía's room and the kitchen because a cement truck comes and leaves it cheap. But all my things are recycled, I never bought myself an armchair or a room. All furniture is free.

“Everything is to support her. It's all been worth it. I see my daughter happy and that is the most important thing. Sometimes she is very insecure and tells me: 'Mom, I can't believe it'. We want an Olympic medal, still this girl, but I wish she had that. Would be the happiest woman. I told him now I can die in peace because I already saw my flag at the top of the podium and heard my National Anthem.

“People who know what they do admire it. People who didn't even talk to me congratulate me. A neighbor told me: 'How exciting that someone from Ciudad Lago appears on TV because of a victory and not because of a thief!'”

Report published in number 2343 of the print edition of Proceso, in circulation since September 26, 2021.