Apart from the resounding success of Alberto Ginés at the Tokyo Games, who with his gold put climbing at the forefront of Spanish sport, last September Erik Noya achieved the world runner-up in the speed test. There was not just a drop in the desert of climbing, which little by little begins to see how more climbing walls are approved. “We already have three. In my case, now he trained in ek CAR of Sant Cugat with a scholarship that is being processed”, Points out the climber who now resides in Pamplona, a native of San Antonio de los Altos (Venezuela).
But Noya’s story begins much earlier in Malgrat de Mar, a small coastal town in Barcelona. At the beginning of the last century, Félix Cardona Puig was born there, textile entrepreneur and Nautical student who traveled to Venezuela to become the man who discovered the most remote places of the country. An explorer from head to toe, who among other finds is credited with the famous Angel Falls, the highest natural waterfall in the world (1,421 meters), and one of the most fantasy landscapes that inspired science fiction films such as Avatar. Noya is his great-grandson.
Erik Noya.
Oskar montero
Erik grew up with that reminiscence along with his parents and his brother Jordi, who now resides in Vigo. His family is half Catalan (they emigrated in the middle of the Civil War), so since he was a child he had a Spanish passport. By chance, at the age of eight, she discovered climbing at a friend’s “birthday party” and convinced her mother to practice a sport that “hooked her from the start”. In 2015, at just 17 years old, he already participated in the first Youth World Cup representing Venezuela.
His trip to Spain: from being a firefighter to working for Glovo
But the problems in the country caused Noya to take the step of coming to Spain. “It was unmasked that this was a dictatorship. The situation was critical and he was regressing as a person. My godmother lived in Madrid and I decided to go with her ”, she explains. That was in 2017, when he remembers that he resumed training at the Elipa Sports Center, where the first official climbing wall was built.
But Noya ran into amateur reality. Bachelor of Economics in VenezuelaHe looked at the oppositions and even tried to take the exams to be a firefighter, but it was too difficult to combine it with his sport. He chose to work as a delivery man for Glovo and post his training videos on Instagram. In 2018 he was already working as a coach in Leganés and he was champion of Spain of speed. “In Spain there is a delay of ten years in my discipline”, he comments.
His great-grandfather, Félix Cardona Puig, discovered the Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world located in Venezuela.
That success, however, did not lead him to the national team. “There is a technician called Toni Roig who says that speed has no future. But in 2019 there are changes and with the arrival of David Macià my life is transformed. He said that our discipline could not die. He transferred me to Pamplona with Isaac Estévez, from Ecuador, and we trained at the city’s climbing wall. Alberto Ginés came every week in 2020 to prepare with us ”, he emphasizes.
Life has changed rapidly. Noya thoroughly prepares the Paris Games, where climbing divides the three tests, so each discipline will award medals independently. Like his great-grandfather in the middle of the century, Noya is an explorer of climbing and in Paris he wants to get hold of his particular Angel Falls.
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