“I will continue as long as I continue to feel competitive, my big dream is Los Angeles 2028”

The Spanish cyclist Ricardo Ten is clear that his “big dream” is to be able to compete in 2028 in the Paralympic Games in Los Angeles (United States) and that, despite his age (50 years) and having already won everything, he is going to “continue” in high competition as long as he continues to feel “competitive” in a sport that offers him “so much” and from which he has benefited from his previous career as a swimmer.

“I know that I can’t go much further, but I think that until I continue to feel competitive I will continue. My big dream would be to be able to reach the Los Angeles Games, which I think is not too far-fetched, although in the end we all know how complicated it is to get to a big event like the Games. As long as the body holds out, we are going to be there doing what we like,” Ten said in the ‘Zona RFEC’ podcast published this Friday

The Valencian has had another year of success both on the road and on the track and already has 20 world champion rainbow jerseys, although after winning gold in the C1 class time trial at the Paris Paralympic Games he thought his challenges were over. “It is difficult to describe, after Paris, and I think I spoke about it with Begoña (Luis, current coach), I had that feeling that I had achieved something that I wanted and that I longed for and it was difficult for me to return to the routine or to focus on what I wanted,” he confessed.

“But then, cycling offers me so much. I came from the world of swimming and the only thing I saw was the line on the ground and, now, suddenly, being able to train up and down mountain passes is something incredible. It allows me those moments that daily training gives me and then doing something that I am passionate about, which is competition,” he noted.

And before the last Games, Ten experienced “a really hard moment” in 2021 in Tokyo, where he left empty-handed on an individual level despite being one of the favorites and only with bronze on the track in the team speed with Alfonso Cabello and Pablo Jaramillo. “The beautiful moments are incredible, but I think the difficult ones mark you more and they are the ones you really learn from,” he warned.

“The ones in Tokyo were special because they were my first as a cyclist, with a fulfilled dream of being able to go to others in a different discipline, with the added incentive of being the flag bearer, which is a very, very great honor for any athlete, and we arrived in incredible shape, I think even better than in the Paris Games,” the cyclist stressed.

However, given that “sport is often unfair”, he could not shine, not even in the time trial, his specialty, where a heatstroke even caused him to fall and abandon. “It was my last chance to get an individual medal and I believed I could get it, but that ambition that often makes you give 200 percent played a trick on me and I made rookie mistakes. I got a tremendous heatstroke and I went to the ground, there are images that are also recorded that are a bit Dantesque for trying to get up and I couldn’t stay up even though in my head the only thing I could do was cross the finish line,” he recalled.

But, despite everything, he considers himself “a fairly positive person” who does not like to dwell on “negative moments”, something that sport has helped him with since he suffered the accident as a very young child that cost him the amputation of both arms. “I think it was a very great tool in which I felt very comfortable because I felt like any child, neither special nor different but just one more,” said the Valencian.

“Trying to be one of them has always made me stand out a little and the sport was able to win over teammates and friends who did not have any disabilities. It was something that helped me a lot to raise my self-esteem and accept myself as I was, and to be able to somehow evolve with my disability,” he added in this regard.

“THANKS TO SWIMMING I AM THE CYCLIST I AM TODAY”

The eleven-time Paralympic medalist does not forget that sport is also “playful” and “social” and that “it is a very great tool that allows you to enjoy those moments with friends.” “It is also health and it helps people with disabilities a lot to manage our daily lives and the passing of the years because little by little we know that this is becoming a burden and each time it makes our performance go down,” he highlighted.

“If I am the cyclist I am today, it is thanks to swimming, also for everything it has taught me,” said the Spanish cyclist, who does not forget that the transition from the pool to his current sport was “very healthy mentally” and that he had had “the great fortune” of having won everything in swimming, where he already noticed that records were “stagnating over the years”, that “young people appeared pushing very hard” and that he had lost “ambition to give everything.”

Furthermore, he had always been “very passionate” about cycling. “It was almost like a gift. I took it without any type of pressure and I was clear that I was going to do it to enjoy myself and to do what I liked, which was to compete. I wanted to see how far I was able to go, but it surprised everyone greatly that everything happened so quickly. I was convinced that by putting in hours and training seriously I could become good, but I didn’t imagine it would be so soon,” he explained.

Ricardo Ten also talks about the evolution he has experienced in Paralympic sports and for people with disabilities. “When I started it was a completely amateur sport and very little known and recognized in the media. It has evolved a lot during all these years. In Spain we have always had a very great potential and it has not been precisely because there was some aid, but in recent years it has been very important,” he explained.

In the debit, the Valencian athlete notes “the little point of research is pending” and having “that field of research that makes you go one ‘little step’ ahead of others.” “Having those studies that make you have that ace up your sleeve so that when you get to the big date you can have that extra,” he reflected.