85
TOKYO
OLYMPICS
Athletes
On the
Front Line
SPANISH TRIATHLETE SUSANA RODRÍGUEZ SPLIT
HER TIME DURING THE PANDEMIC CARING FOR
COVID-19 PATIENTS AND TRAINING FOR TOKYO
BY CIARA NUGENT
PHOTOGRAPH BY GIANFRANCO TRIPODO FOR TIME
PHYSICIAN AND
PARALYMPIAN
RODRÍGUEZ IN HER
HOMETOWN OF VIGO
s a kid, susana RodRíguez
wanted to do whatever her sister,
Patricia, two years older, could do.
Susana was born with a severe visual
impairment due to albinism, while Patricia
could see perfectly. But on playgrounds in the
girls’ hometown of Vigo, northern Spain, when
Patricia reached the highest, most complicated
point of the jungle gym, it beckoned to Susana
too, she says. “I would always try until I could
do it too, without any help. I think that’s what
created in me this eagerness to fight.”
That determination has powered the
33-year-old through twin careers in triathlons—
long-distance races that combine swimming,
cycling and running—and medicine, a field with
major barriers to entry for visually impaired peo-
ple. Even her resolve, though, might have been
tested by the pandemic. When COVID-19 hit
Spain early and hard, hospitals were driven to a
state of collapse, and lockdowns made it impos-
sible to train outside. The 2020 Olympic and Para-
lympic Games, the latter of which Rodríguez had
been training for over the previous four years, were
postponed and plunged into uncertainty. After a
year’s delay, Rodríguez is finally preparing to head
to Tokyo, speaking to TIME a few weeks before
leaving for training camp with the rest of the Span-
ish Paralympic team. She has stayed at the top ofA
her game, winning two gold medals in June, add-
ing to a long list of 27 wins in international compe-
tition, including three world championships.Like everyone eLse, Rodríguez spent the first
months of the pandemic in a state of mounting
fear and anxiety. Every morning began with a
meeting on how many COVID-19 patients the
hospital had and how many beds and ventila-
tors were left. She worked phone lines to help
people figure out if they needed a test for the
virus, and rehabilitated COVID-19 patients who
were weakened by the virus and long ICU stays.
Meanwhile, she kept training every afternoon
after her hospital shift. “I think sports helped me
to be able to recover and go back in and face the
next day at work,” she says.
Barred from even walking or running out-
side by Spain’s strict lockdown, she stayed in
the apartment she shared with two other health
workers. She spent three hours each day on a row-
ing machine, an exercise bike and a treadmill,
hastily delivered by Spain’s Paralympic Commit-
tee. That discipline started in childhood. Rodrí-
guez decided at the age of 10 that she wanted to
become an athlete. She began spending a fixed
two hours on schoolwork every day to make sure
she didn’t fall behind on her education while
training. “Every day meant every day,” she says.
“Consistency is the key.” Her strict schedules
proved useful when, at 18, she decided to work
in health care; again when she was 22 and started
training for triathlons; and, of course, in prepar-
ing for Tokyo during a pandemic.
As in all her triathlon competitions, she will
work with a guide who tells her what’s happen-
ing on the circuit, cycling on a tandem bike and
running and swimming, joined to them by a cord.
Pending confirmation from the national com-
mittee in mid-July, she is also set to compete in
the 1,500-m race, which would make her the first
Spaniard to compete in two separate event cat-
egories at the same Games.
The event will be very diferent from her first
Paralympics in 2016: there will be no foreign
spectators, no spending time with other teams,
and a strict regimen of PCR tests. Because the
entire team needs to quarantine in Spain for
two weeks before the Games, she will arrive in
Tokyo less than 10 days before her events begin,
leaving little time to acclimate to the city’s
high humidity. Nevertheless, Rodríguez says
the past year has reaffirmed her faith in both
sports and medicine: “What we’ve been through
has made me realize even more: health is the
most important thing, both for the individual
and for the collective. If you don’t have health,
everything else is in the air.”