Biel Ràfols, the camera that films Kilian Jornet

In the mountain you learn that you are very small: a piedrate that goes down or a storm can eliminate you from the map

Kilian Jornet

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Biel Ràfols (37) is a great fondista and this Sunday the Marathon from Barcelonabut our character will not be there, I mean at the exit of Passeig de Gràcia, because after all that is not its background: Biel Ràfols is a mountain fondista, of Trail Running, and what he does well, really very well, is to interpret maps and capture images.

Interpret maps?

In 2010 it became the Spanish guidance racing champion.

Capture images?

He has been furrowing forests and slopes for more than ten years, mount and down, filming the icons of the Ultra Trail, to Kilian Jornet, Pau Capell, Núria Picas or Oihana Kortazar.

– How much does the camera with which it runs and films weigh? I ask him.

–All of 2.5 kilos.

– And how films?

–It stands ahead of a corridor, or his side, and focused on the march. Sometimes I run and hold the camera reverse, filming the corridor behind me, as if I was chasing me.

– And how do you see what films?

– I see it. I intuit it. Sometimes, if I am filming a live, the production partners notify me for the pinganillo: ‘Eh, that you are not focusing on the corridor!’ In general, I have been taking the calm based on the trial-error.

(There is: the art of the rehearsal-error, as so many things in life …).

Read too

– And you are not afraid to fall? Have you never given a tube?

– I suppose that, in an unconscious way, I trained for it when I disputed guidance races. I have run many kilometers with a map in my hand, analyzing it sideways while advanced by a forest, or downstairs. Running filming is similar …

(Anyway, reader, better not try to imitate him: we don’t have enough, mortals, breathing while we advance forest inside?).

I have run many kilometers with a map in my hand, analyzing it. Running filming is similar … “

Biel RàfolsUltrafondista and Chamber

(…)

– How long can you run in front of an Ultra Trail professional, recording him?

“Seis, seven minutes … sometimes, more.” It depends on what you need to film. I have run many kilometers next to Kilian Jornet. We met at the Vall de Núria duathlon, many years ago, and we have coincided with dozens of Salomon races, a firm in which I work (it is in Sports Marketing of Trail Salomon Spain), such as the Zegama-Aizkorri, the Sierre-Zinal or the Salomon Ultra Pirineu.

– And when they run together, do they talk?

– Sometimes, Kilian asked me things. I wondered about my family, although we could not extend either. He was competing and at that time he doesn’t like to talk. Other times, when I was looking for the record of a test, I asked me to turn away because I needed to see the tour well. And I obeyed, of course. Although I always try to keep aside, to film from the side, not from front. It is important that the corridor trusts you: he cannot waste time because you are filming him.

– And if the corridor falls or loses a bottle along the way, can you help you?

– See, it can’t be that you help one and not another. I mean: you can’t make a corridor hare, for example. And you can’t offer you too much information. I mean: last year, in the Zegama-Aizkorri, Kilian took eight minutes of margin to the second, but the fatigue and the unreality generated by the effort prevented him from thinking clearly. He believed that his persecutors were being on him, and he was wondering about the advantage he took them.

– And did you answer?

– I had to be impartial: after all, that information must be given the trusted people, that of their team, which follows the career live and online.

– And how did you discover this world?

– It comes from family! My grandmother, Pilar Lladó (87), was climbing spikes until 2017. My father, my mother and my sister, the same. And I suspect that my children, Tura (7) and Arau (5), will also. Not long ago, we gather four generations to play an asphalt race. There were my grandmother and my daughter!