(BRIDGESTONE PRESENTS)
Oscar didn't dream about just any Olympic medal,
he dreamt of the gold medal.
The ghost of Beijing cannot be back again.
This is where my sports career ends.
You are the best.
Do it and you're guaranteed a medal.
(AGAINST ALL ODDS, OSCAR FIGUEROA)
In the world of Olympic sports,
it all starts with a child's dream.
(COLOMBIA)
In my house, my parents were very hard on me
and with all their children.
So, they made us all pretty strong
and I'm a person who thinks about being the first
and being the best.
When we lived here we worked on the mine, mining gold.
If you didn't work on the mine
you couldn't survive because there was no other way.
I said to my mother,
"I don't want to continue living like this.
"This is not the life I want for myself."
These are young people
who come from marginalised family neighbourhoods.
They are families that have a lot of problems,
in that if you have breakfast you don't have lunch,
if you have lunch you don't have dinner.
I remember that when I went to the Coliseum in La Isleta,
I told them that I wanted to train and they said,
"Yes, come, come on, train."
He knew absolutely nothing about weightlifting.
He learned the technique in one day.
I did not know that he was a prodigy.
When we travelled, if the front seat was empty,
he sat in the front.
He used to say, "I just like being number one."
You should not feel ashamed of where you come from.
I think he got over this,
because he risked falling into crime.
The social and family environment
was not very conducive to his training.
Then the coach said,
"No, no, you have to take the boy
"because he is going to go to waste here."
Someone told me, "Oscar is a very strong kid from Cartago."
This is the first thing I heard about him.
In two weeks, I saw him compete as an amateur in Cali.
And of course, he was an absolute talent.
Then we realised that he had the profile
to become a very high level athlete in the future.
Within a very short time,
I was already in the major leagues.
(OLYMPIC GAMES ATHENS, GREECE, 2004)
I was shocked when I saw him at the Olympic Games in Athens.
I thought, I just saw this child starting
and he is already at an Olympic Games.
And he was very close to winning a medal.
But he achieved something that we didn't think he could,
but he did, and it was to come to the realisation
that he could be an Olympic champion.
Before the Beijing Olympics, before I arrived there,
I had mentally prepared myself to win the gold.
I was saying, "I'm going to win the gold at this Olympics."
At that time, I had a Bulgarian coach,
and our relationship was not good.
There were lots of things there.
The training methods of the coach were too aggressive.
In addition to being a coach, he was a military man.
It was then like a military regime,
arrive early, do things perfectly...
That is, he either has it or he doesn't.
A series of things that are not easy to understand
here, in Latin America.
He never understood that Oscar could not work
with maximum loads.
And he always used to say to us,
"The mediocre have no right to live, they have to die
"because they will not be good for anything."
Two weeks before the Olympic Games in Beijing,
I began to feel a very, very strong pain in my neck.
Well, I gripped the bar and it fell out of my hands
and I felt, at that moment, huge impotence,
knowing how strong I was...
Neither the doctor or the most intelligent physio
could tell what was happening to him.
As the time to compete came closer,
the pain emerged, and more pain, and more.
The coach didn't want to know anything.
In his view, I was no longer worthy.
He simply stepped aside
and abandoned me in the middle of the competition.
The only one who stayed with him
through the entire competition was me.
(OLYMPIC GAMES BEIJING, CHINA, 2008)
To win a medal in the Olympics was a big challenge.
And we felt we could do that in Beijing.
Oscar was our fundamental piece.
During the Beijing Olympics, he was among the favourites.
The possibility of a medal in Beijing was something feasible.
Come on, come on, you can do it!
His dream was clear, he was going to be a medallist.
When I saw the first attempt
and the bar fell from his hands,
I thought, "Something is happening to him."
I calmed down and said to myself,
"Well, let's do it on the next try,"
and I adjusted the tape better.
I attempted the second lift and...
Come on, Oscar, you can do it! Come on, let's go!
Every time he did this,
I knew he was insecure and something was wrong.
And I said...
And on the second attempt,
I thought that there was something serious going on.
And then the third attempt comes...
You're fine, you can do it.
He focuses all his efforts.
I went out to attempt the last lift,
which I was hoping to be able to lift.
Come on!
And it didn't.
What can you say at that moment? Nothing.
Some of the media and people in Colombia
didn't believe that Oscar Figueroa was injured.
Instead, they thought that he was a little rebellious,
that he didn't want to compete.
The entire sporting community was against me,
because they believed the coach more than they believed me.
They said I did not want to be an Olympic champion.
The doctor said there was nothing wrong
with Oscar Figueroa,
that there was no problem with his wrist.
And at that time, huge doubt was sown,
because one didn't know who was right,
whether it was Oscar or the doctor.
In the middle of a competition,
I was approached by a Cuban colleague
and he said to me,
"Oscar, what you have is a C6-C7 cervical hernia."
The Cuban doctor ordered an MRI.
I went with Cristina,
the physiotherapist, to get the results.
And I see her come close to tears.
And says to me, "Yes, Oscar, it's what they said.
"It is very serious and you can become a quadriplegic."
I went to my room.
I remember crying like I had never done before.
And then I broke down and thought...
I'm going to retire, I have nothing left to do.
This is where my sports career ends.
When he returned from Beijing, he stayed in Cali
and disconnected from the world.
It was something that would have affected anyone.
It drives you into a depression
and getting out of it is very difficult.
And I can tell you that anyone other than Oscar
would have given up.
I start thinking about how to get better
and what type of surgery would help me.
We were already clear about the diagnosis,
we had to find the solution.
The option was to operate on the C6-C7 vertebrae,
but then I would not be able
to practise weightlifting again.
(LOS REMEDIOS CLINIC SPINAL SURGERY)
We went to Dr Villota. We found him to be a great support.
In Oscar's case, there is a specific implication
that committed me a little more.
Which was his role as a high performance athlete.
And then I told him,
"I can't do it, because I can not guarantee that
"you will be able to continue weightlifting."
It was a herniated disc,
to be treated at the Center for Minimally Invasive Surgery
that Dr Jorge Ramirez has set up in Bogota.
Oscar came to me.
I listened to him, I looked at the images, I examined them.
And I told him that he had a herniated disc
and that the solution was surgical treatment.
I put myself in the hands of Dr Jorge Felipe Ramirez.
Oscar asked me, "Doctor, can I go on competing?"
And I told him, "Oscar,
"you will not only continue to compete,
"you will win a medal at the next Olympic Games."
When I told him that, he hugged me and said,
"Can you operate on me tomorrow?"
It was surgery in a very complicated area...
..where there are a lot of nerves
that could not be touched.
Where it had to be approached from the front to the back.
The risk was great.
In medicine, unfortunately, one plus one is not two,
because it is not a mathematical science.
We are now finishing the last puncture.
The surgery was a complete success.
Only three hours after the operation...
He returned to being a very strong person and, above all,
he was convinced that he could get there again.
I took radical decisions.
Gancho Karouchkov was not good for weightlifting in Colombia
so I worked hard to get him out of the national team.
It was good that he had a new trainer.
So he started preparing for the future.
I definitely thought
that I could get to London and get my gold.
(OLYMPIC GAMES LONDON, UK, 2012)
29 years old.
His 15-year-long weight-lifting career.
If he nails this, he'll move into the silver.
All or nothing now.
- Hold still, hold still! - Yes, he does!
When he arrived in Colombia,
he said something very special,
he told me, "I wanted the gold medal."
You need to believe,
to trust...
..to desire,
to be disciplined.
And the only way was to keep working.
He started on the journey to Rio
and people began to say that Oscar Figueroa is already old.
People were not confident Oscar
would reach again his top level.
We already knew about his cervical hernias.
And then there was an episode of extraordinary back pain.
I had three episodes of acute crisis.
At night, pain woke me up.
A herniated disc is very hard.
It oppresses the nerve.
So when you're holding weight, it crushes.
I used to fall when walking.
And I said, "This is not possible.
"The ghost of Beijing can not have returned.
"This can not happen again."
He told me, "My back is killing me.
"If I don't get surgery I won't go to the Olympics."
I examined him, he showed me the MRI and I said to him,
"Oscar, how have you been lifting weights?
"You have two lumbar herniated discs
"and facet joint osteoarthritis."
I told him that I needed to have surgery again
and whether he was going to come to Rio with me,
whether he wanted to be a champion with me.
I did some calculations, and we had six months maximum.
The surgery in January, the Olympic Games in August...
It's very little time, but we will do it.
I operate on Oscar so that he can be an Olympic champion,
a gold medallist.
Another silver is not enough for Colombia any more.
The gold one.
It was seven months before the Olympics,
there was no time to take it easy.
So we had to speed up the process.
There was little time left, it was time for faith.
During those seven months,
preparation was very hard and painful.
The pain caused by the healing of the scar was very hard.
And the doctor told me that I was going to be in pain
for the next six months.
It was very tough for Oscar.
He had many sleepless nights
because the pain wouldn't allow him to sleep.
The pain feels like needles on your back.
And you can't move.
He didn't know if he was going to get there or not.
And we left for Rio.
(OLYMPIC GAMES RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL, 2016)
Oscar did not dream of any Olympic medal,
he dreamt of the gold medal.
The amount of people who supported him,
it was the day he had been waiting for four years.
Brazil was Oscar's last chance,
the last chance to get the gold.
This is for the gold, Eugenio.
This is the result of heart,
strength, mentality, concentration.
The time for the competition has arrived,
without having touched the competition weights.
Everyone realises
that he has had two herniated discs operated on
and they assume that Oscar Figueroa is not at his best.
Let's see how Oscar Figueroa goes.
Maximum concentration from the Colombian weightlifter.
Come on! Come on!
The start of the competition was very strong.
Oscar's main rivals have always been the Chinese.
Medal disputes have almost always been
against the Chinese.
The Chinese Chen, who was world number one, world champion...
..has to retire because of an injury
on his second snatch attempt.
It may be that Oscar fails on the second attempt.
Here goes Figueroa.
He holds the weights.
Then you have to have the
mental capacity to think,
you have failed but you do not let yourself break down.
There is a lot of tension, there are many Colombians here,
a lot of yellow shirts, there is a lot of patriotism here.
Let's see what happens, it's between three weightlifters -
the Indonesian, the Kazakhstani and Figueroa with 172.
The Kazakhstani goes up.
The Indonesian goes now.
I don't see him doing well, not at all.
But the man has courage.
He got up when he was in difficulty.
As I'm about to lift 176 on my second attempt,
Oswaldo told me,
"If you do it, you've already got the gold."
It is the culminating moment.
Figueroa is coming, ladies and gentlemen.
Oscar Figueroa is aiming for glory.
Pinilla, the Colombian coach, is oozing a sense of calm.
I hug him and I told him,
"Oscar, we are going for it, we're going to win,
"we are going to leave it all out there.
"At the end, we are going to celebrate."
At that moment, my hands had already begun to feel numb.
I began to have cold sweats.
It was like letting go all those years of suffering.
In that moment, my 33 years of life
flashed through my mind.
And an inner voice told me,
"Oscar, no more pain."
My God, we are on your hands.
Oscar Figueroa.
A son of Colombia, look at how his muscles are opening now.
Well, he'll lift it for sure.
Very sure, Figueroa!
He got it, Colombia got it! Colombia won gold!
Figueroa did it!
So many years, so much effort
and I could not assimilate it was true.
I cried of happiness
because of the commitment
I had made to him and the country.
I cried a lot that day.
I cried and thought, "My God, at last."
I still live the excitement.
Dreams are part of your goals in life
and they are important to keep yourself young.
When you stop dreaming...
either you are dead
or you stop living.
I was taught at home to work hard to be number one.
It doesn't matter how many difficult times I go through,
I never give up.
(SPECIAL THANKS TO:)
(AND TO ALL THOSE YOUNG WEIGHTLIFTERS,
(WHETHER PROFESSIONAL OR NOT,
(WHO HAVE FOUGHT HARD TO ACHIEVE THEIR DREAMS)
(AGAINST ALL ODDS PRESENTED BY BRIDGESTONE)
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