Valentina's bravery

 

     Valentina Barrios Bornacelli trainning on the track  in Barranquilla, Colombia.  (Foto / Juan P. Vélez) 

Origin and improvement of Valentina Barrios Bornacelli, Colombian silver medalist in javelin throw at the Cali 2022 Youth World Cup.

The athlete from Barranquilla, Atlántico, is the result of two committed and humble parents who have made sacrifices for her youngest daughter who overcame a personal crisis after separating from her coach, denounced for verbal harassment and abuse in the midst of the pandemic. How did she do it? Valentina Barrios showed her character to overcome fears and difficulties such as not having a stable coach.

By Nilson Romo Mendoza

In one year Valentina Barrios Bornacelli (Barranquilla 2003), the 2022 junior silver medalist in the javelin throw, emerged from a possible blockade in her career to enter the history of Colombian athletics.

Before the trip to his first U-20 World Cup in Nairobi, Kenya, in August 2021, the pandemic kept the country on alert. Training was limited and only the PCR tests could give the passport and the order to organize suitcases to the 15 athletes, with minimum marks of Colombia and concentrated Bogotá, to leave for African territory.

With her calm personality, Valentina tried to pass the controls, avoid a contagion of the virus and eliminate negative thoughts that would block her for the World Cup. Neider Abello, the second Atlantic Athletics League athlete in the delegation, was confirmed for Nairobi, while Melanie Bolaños, the virus ruled her out.

Barrios lost a colleague of the training process from a very young age in the athletics of Barranquilla under the pulse of Juan Carlos Cervantes, who had also received notification of the opening of an investigation for alleged mistreatment and harassment by other athletes.

In addition, in May 2021 Barrios had raised his voice on behalf of some athletes of the Atlantic selection to Indeportes (entity in charge of accompanying the competitive process with stimuli) and its director, Armando Segovia. The athletes demanded more support before returning to the federation championships and after receiving little aid in the midst of the pandemic in 2020.

Her words and what was spread on social networks caused her parents to reproach her for appearing leading that protest. In Valentina's claim was also the complaint of a pain in the right elbow, which had no diagnosis and was treated with ice.

With Valentina's first place and the title in the National of Barrancabermeja, plus the impact of the complaint against coach Juan Carlos Cervantes, Barrios Bornacelli avoided standing on a precipice.

“I had considered going to this World Cup strong, doing it better. Well, I've done everything on my part to look for an important place. What has happened with my coach and the rest has made me lose focus a little bit. It shook me a bit, but no more, it hasn't distracted me from my goal, which is the World Cup”, Valentina said by phone from Bogotá and before the trip to Nairobi”.

At that time, the national champion was trying to get out of the emotional state with the advice of Neider Abello. She says that Abello with her prayers to God sustained her. "He was close so that the flame would not go out, that it would not affect me".

 

—“How affected are you?”

—“At first in training it had gone badly for me. It is the truth. I wasn't concentrating on the throws. Something awful. It was like I wasn't throwing and thinking about everything. And I said to myself: this won’t affect my career. This is a big and important championship; it is the U20 World Cup. I was getting into my mind and taking out those negative thoughts. Those were distracting thoughts, but now I feel much better. I could say I did it and overcame this whole situation. I can’t say I’ll win the World Cup, but I'll give it my all and, God willing, I'll do something very important in my trial for Colombia”.

Valentina tried it and on August 19 she showed that her particular way of motivating herself helped her; she achieved a meritorious fifth place in Nairobi throwing 54.43 meters.

A few months earlier Cervantes had predicted that Valentina was about to enter the top five in the world. He spoke with great confidence of her possibilities and marks. The strong, imposing character of the coach was already cause for concern. Valentina had wondered last year why Cervantes behaved like overprotecting her. Before a recording in the athletics stadium, authorized by the president of the Athletics League, Orlando Ibarra and for a local government media outlet, Cervantes showed his annoyance, because they had not asked him first.

With the complaint and the forced separation, Valentina says that until after the World Cup in Kenya she cut off all communication with the coach.

That morning of August 19, 2021 in Colombia, late in Kenya, Juana Bornacelli, her mother, Ardidis Barrios, the father, and Waldir, her older brother, saw the feat on the internet transmission signal on a large television.

 

Valentina surprised Juana before the trip by saying that she was going to paint her hair blue, like the one that singer Karol G showed until a few months ago.

 

—Before you told me, you had already bought the dye.

—Mom, I'll make an invention to match the blue uniform of Colombia.

I asked Jhovana Camargo about her best friend Valentina Barrios. Camargo, a 400-meter dash runner recovering from a hamstring injury, beams with excitement. Along with Melanie Bolaños, Jhovana learns about Valentina's rise.

“We share many things together. I always remember that before the trips our parents told us: stay with Valentina and make sure they are in the same room. Take care of each other”.

In that journey of evocations, Jhovana Camargo specifies that they began training in Barranquilla, in the Metropolitan stadium, outdoors, in the sand areas of the ears of the bridge in Murillo on the Circunvalar, when the sports arena was closed for civil works or for soccer events and they could not train. The sand track of the Romelio Martínez stadium was another remembered place.

“My parents and my family are very excited about her achievement. We are spectators of all the growth that she has had and all that she has fought to be there. I am very happy and I know that she is also very happy. We are very proud".

Juana Bornacelli and Ardidis Barrios lived as a couple in the Simón Bolívar neighborhood, southeast of Barranquilla, where they arrived from Polonuevo (municipality in the center of the Atlantic) with Waldir, the eldest son, who was five months old.

Ardidis and Juana had mortgaged a house in Polonuevo for 4 million pesos and acquired a commitment with the bank. Their wish was to establish themself in Barranquilla and generate better income, encouraged by Ardidis's mother who owned a kiosk in Simón Bolívar.

With the festive atmosphere and the environment of the popular neighborhood, Ardidis and Juana rented a tin-walled kiosk to sell soups, lunches and drinks. The growth of this micro-business allowed the construction of a small interior room. Five years later, on December 2, 2003, Valentina Barrios was born at Nazareth Hospital.

 

The daughter grew up in a cradle that had as a view the urban landscape and the music of the weekends, the soccer games, the daily noise of the Simón Bolívar bus traffic.

The sales grew and the income supported the home that was enough for its formalization with the registration in the Chamber of Commerce, the payment of water services, electricity and taking Valentina, with 6 years of age, to swimming classes in a course in the Olympic pool.

The closure of the Olympic Pool in 2009 interrupted Valentina's strokes and sent the family to find another sport to occupy the girl's time. Ardidis remembers that Indeportes (pool administrator) told him to go to the Romelio Martínez soccer stadium, where they could find another discipline to practice on vacation.

November 2021 marked the 11th anniversary of Valentina's first class in athletics. Juana Bornachelli says that she started in athletics when she was 7 years old; namely a decade ago. Her husband clarified that it was in 2010.

Juan Carlos Cervantes, a graduate in Physical Education from the Universidad del Atlántico, received Valentina from her parents. She agreed with them that they would take her once a week and, a few months later, she went every three days.

With the commitment, Juana Bornacelli specifies that Cervantes was paid 20,000 pesos (around USD 11 at that time) each month for her daughter's training in athletics. On the sand track of the Romelio Martínez stadium, in his first races, he was able to see the training sessions of Briggite Merlano, a 100-meter hurdles runner from the Atlantic Athletics League at the London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics. She was an inspiration.

 

    Valentina's photographic memories in track /Photo Nilson Romo Mendoza/

Valentina Barrios and Jhovana Camargo began to strengthen their friendship in 2014, when they competed in national children's championships.

Valentina Barrios and Jhovana Camargo began to strengthen their friendship in 2014, when they competed in national children's championships. In the photos of that first national in Bucaramanga they are uniformed in red and black, in the company of Melanie Bolaño, a World Cup player in Cali 2022, Nayelis Obregón, Ronald Rangel, Juliana Hernández, Nelson Gutiérrez and Chesly Serrano.

Valentina appears in the photograph at the age of 11 showing the flexibility of her legs, like a compass on the ground. She is one of the tallest, and Jhovana, her hair braided, is standing with the group.

On the Field of Mars and track of that championship, the two girls with tender faces displayed the first manifestations of their speed and strength. Juana says that Valentina has her grandmother's gene: Neyla Varela Mastrodomenico. This woman, Juana's mother, stood out for her power in the sack races at Polonuevo.

Fifth in the world in javelin throw and without the certainty of having a coach in Colombia, without deciding whether to stay in Bogotá, where she spent a few months training before the end of 2021, Valentina Barrios was preparing the ground to go to the United States.

Valentina received from Violeta Cantillo, an athlete and a graduate in Languages, personalized classes to meet one of the requirements to be a candidate for a scholarship at a university in the United States. The hammer thrower, Colombian Carolina Ulloa, a scholarship student at the University of Washington, proposed to Valentina that her marks in throwing could be the key to open the door and study in the northern country.

With the visa in hand, Barrios managed to present herself and be awarded a scholarship as a Veterinary student at the university where Carolina Ulloa studies. Valentina Barrios made her first-team All-American debut as a freshman and posted a record eighth-place finish (54.03 meters) that took her to the finals at the NCAA T&F Championships.

She achieved a second place in his first conference meeting with a mark of 50.31 meters. And he won the Fresno State Invitational in April 2022 (48.84), the WSU—UW Dual (49.80) and the Hayward Premier (50.28).

In the second semester of 2022, she changed universities and went on to defend Missouri, as he announced to his parents. Juana Bornacelli says that, despite the results with the Washington state team, her daughter not manage to have a good empathy with the coach women. This time she says she will try the methods of a trainer men.

In the grandstand of the Pascual Guerrero stadium in Cali, on August 3, 2022, upon seeing Valentina's fourth throw in the Youth World Cup final (57.84 meters and a new national record), Ardidis Barrios closed his waterlogged eyes because of the emotion and remembered 2012. Valentina's debut in the Bucaramanga Children's National. In that event she threw the ball so hard (proof for those starting out in field athletics) that she set a record mark for her category.

“I remembered the hard and difficult moments. From Valentina's record in the Freska Leche tournament when she threw at the age of nine. All of this is a precious experience that God is giving us”, Ardidis said.

Complex moments, underlines Ardidis Barrios, such as giving up the area of ​​the kiosk in Simón Bolívar for the civil works of the green area and adaptations of the neighboring soccer field. The negotiation for possession that they defended and then negotiated to buy a lot in Nuevo Éxito, a neighborhood parallel to the Circunvalar on land in the municipality of Soledad, Atlántico.

Valentina Barrios went through stages as a child and junior runner, being a fifteen-year-old in 2019, with the new Rafael Cotes athletics stadium in Barranquilla, she also participated in long and triple jump competitions. Competing today with talents from that specialty such as Estrella Lobo, from Magdalena. The jumps marked her and more in the confrontation against Caterine Ibargüen, the Colombian Olympic medalist.

On the night of May 18, 2018, Juana Bornacelli was among the hundreds of fans who filled the stands of the Rafael Cotes stadium, and saw a nervous Valentina. The mother took the opportunity to see her before 11 pm, the time to appear at El Heraldo, where she works as an organizer of printed products until dawn.

Being close to Caterine Ibargüen and with the audience fascinated by the jumps of the ebony-skinned athlete paralyzed Valentina. The next day Juana said to her daughter:

—But, ¿why did you get like that, Valentina? If it is already the second time that you compete against Caterine Ibargüen

—Mom I saw Caterine very big.

Valentina has left the past to write her big story. The silver medal in the U-20 World Cup elevates her and drives her to seek the first time in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

For the World Cup in Cali, the silver medalist admitted that she had no preparation. The trips to compete for the University of Washington, United States, and only arriving in Colombia to look for a coach and finding him in Ángel Salcedo, from the Santander League, allowed him to draw up a plan. Before leaving for the United States, he trained with fellow Cuban Dionisio Quintana, but a surgery by the coach separated them.

Valentina Barrios Bornacelli with the coach Angel Salcedo in Cali, Colombia.  (Foto / Juan P. Vélez) 

The liberating cry in the fourth launch that gave her second place in the world behind the Serbian Adriana Vilagos, gold medalist (63.52 meters), expelled everything that Valentina had inside. She called it a "surprise" at the final.

Valentina was very excited to see the result and her work; She ran to hug Ángel Salcedo, then her parents before the Colombian delegation snatched her away to take her to the spotlights and lights of the media.

Valentina did not speak like in Barranquilla, she had an accent like those from Valle del Cauca. Valentina Barrios said: "It feels very ‘chimba’ as they say here in Cali". With the tricolor flag around his neck, she admitted that there was no preparation for the World Cup. "When I arrived in the country and started training with my coach, Ángel Salcedo, he helped me a lot to focus on what I came here to do".