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My friend Javi Cortes Huete

My friend Javi Cortes Huete

A week and a half has passed. Monday night in Barcelona. I was leaving the newspaper on the T3 shift. In the sports department, we call T3 the shift that starts at four in the afternoon and ends when everything else is over. That night there was the Barça-Rayo game. I started walking at half past twelve.

Yes, it's pitch black.

I got on the bus. I looked at my friend, who was the driver. He told me that he doesn't run anymore.

It was drizzling as I walked up Numància Street. I was heading home. The scene was in darkness. Not a car, not a soul.

At the bus stop, a bus. It had stopped out of obligation, I have already written that the city was sleeping and not a soul was walking around. When I passed by the bus, the driver opened the doors and called out my name:

–Sergiooooo!

The voice tore through the night and my thoughts.

I turned my gaze and there I saw my friend, smiling at me: Javi Cortés Huete.

Javi Cortés Huete is 53 years old and has a wonderful profile in World Athletics. In 2001, he ran the Hamburg Marathon in 2h07m48s.

I repeat: 2h07m48s.

His call gave me a trip back in time.

Runners during the Barcelona marathon

Alejandro Garcia / EFE

When we were 19, we travelled together to the Junior European Championships in Varazdin (then, that was Yugoslavia; today it is Croatia). He competed in the 5,000m. I, in the 800m. Then, Javi Cortés Huete grew as an athlete, rising to the stars. As a marathon runner, he competed in the World Championships in 1999 (Seville), 2001 (Edmonton) and 2003 (Paris). By then, I was following him with notebook in hand. Later I recounted his exploits in La Vanguardia .

I got on the bus. At the back, there were only two passengers.

I looked at my friend. He was a few pounds overweight (which is unavoidable: when he was a professional marathoner, a quarter of a century ago, the man was skinny, skinny, very skinny).

I asked him:

–How are you, my friend?

He told me about his shift. He drives the bus from 10pm until 6am.

Teresa, his wife, drives another one.

He asked me about my family. As I spoke to him about my wife, my daughter, my parents and my siblings, my mind was floating in a sea of ​​memories. Suddenly, I travelled to Varazdin, Munich and Edmonton. He told me that he was no longer racing:

–You know, I had a broken Achilles tendon. I had surgery and that was it.

There was no more. Thirty seconds later, he apologized.

–I have to leave you or I'll break the schedule.

For a moment, I was overcome with doubt. I considered buying a ticket, taking a seat and going with my friend, continuing to travel in time and remembering those years when we both thought we would take on the world in buckets.

Read also

(Reader, if you get on a N0 bus in the dead of night, look at the driver: he could be a hero. They are everywhere.)

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