The Salomon Store in Barcelona lived an intimate and revealing session with the presence of Jan Torrellaone of the young promises of the trail team, and Aitor Viribaybrand performance director. In a close environment, Torrella He exposed without filters a year in which he went from feeling in one of his best moments to dealing with a physical and mental process that altered his planning.
“I felt like I was in a state of shape that was not going down”explained about his solid start to the season. However, the outbreak of a virus radically changed their situation: “I caught like a virus and it started to go down“. From there, he confessed that the internal pressure to not lose level led him to make hasty decisions: “I thought that because of the virus I would lose shape… and everything has already collapsed and an injury started“.
This chain of problems prevented him from arriving in the best conditions at the Canfranc World Cup, one of the great events of the year. “Afterwards I couldn’t get to the world championships very well, which were one of the important ones of the year.“. Despite this, Torrella extracts a broader reading: “In the end, we learn from mistakes.“, he commented, highlighting that this process has allowed him to rethink his way of training, competing and facing pressure.
The runner, who has just won in Prades and, above all, the CDA de Mallorca by UTMB, explained that in recent months he has recovered sensations thanks to more slow and conscious work: “Now, starting to work little by little, I have been able to get a little at the end of the season“. He even evaluated his season globally: “I value it very highly and I am very happy“His perspective is now calmer, avoiding looking only in the short term: “I try to see the long term… each year I become a little better”.
Salomon’s support for its runners
After his intervention, he took the floor Aitor Viribaywho contextualized the young man’s situation within a broader scenario of the current trail. Viribay warned that the competitive ecosystem rewards too soon and without a solid foundation: “If you take the trail today as that ecosystem in which the terrain is rewarded, these people have terrain already when they are 21 or 20 years old, and that makes no sense in any sport.”.
For the performance director, this early pressure is generating obvious risks: “In trail running there are even health and development issues that are not good from the human point of view.“For this reason, Salomon wants to lay the foundations for a more sustainable sports model: “What Salomon wants is for you to have a safe ecosystem in which you can rely on resources.”, he noted, preventing athletes from living on the edge of short contracts or hasty decisions.
Viribay also explained how the brand seeks to balance self-interest with the ambitions of each athlete. “The athlete always has to have ambition for what he does“, he stressed, but also recalled that not everything should fall on them: “They don’t have to know everything or make good decisions.“For this reason, he announced that in January there will be individualized meetings to define the best calendar for each runner: “One by one we are going to sit down… we believe that the best thing for your development is this, this, this”.
Torrella’s case, with an irregular year but full of learning, illustrates precisely the brand’s intention: to build long, healthy and coherent careers. A model where talent is not burned, but accompanied.