Kevin Quintero He is a cyclist because of Gilma Torres, his grandmother. She took him around the stadium palmyra, where every Friday bicycle races were scheduled. For this reason, he remembers her today, when he became world keirin champion in Glasgow, Scotland.
First he dabbled in swimming, but then Gilma took charge of guiding him through the cranks and pedals. Twice a week he would compete and little by little he gained the trust of the coaches.
(Kevin Quintero, spectacular: keirin world champion) (Abadía explodes by ‘veto’ in full historical success of Colombia in the Women’s World Cup)
first pedal strokes
Rafael Arias was his first coach. As always, young people arrive with the illusion of being part of a road team and in Kevin’s story that was presented. Sure, he always entered, but he never competed. He was part of the circuit lots, but his goal was not to go to the races.
Back in 2014, he came into the hands of DT Humberto Velasco, in Palmira, after they took him to a man who was known as the ‘old man’, who was the one who gave him the first instructions in cycling and reached be valley selection.
after a few Departmental Games They changed the technicians, therefore, that rope that was there, because it was affected and Quintero came out as a ‘pepa de guama’. He stayed in the air, without any support.
Velasco helped him and they almost started from scratch. That helped him to become aware of doing the track, of going to the velodrome and getting away from the route. Kevin remembers that it was their turn to go Palmira to Cali, to the velodromecycling.
“That was in 2015. The days were hard, it was not easy to go to Cali on the machine, train and return the same way to Palmira,” he told EL TIEMPO.
And he added: “The thing is that I began to like the track, because I saw that I was giving up, that I had a chance to win and I stayed.”
Why the speed?
Quintero says that he always liked to take risks in everything he did. He liked packaging and that is why he began to specialize. His physical build helped him and that is why he decided to specialize.
Lives in Medellin, He had to leave because the center of track cycling was there, the Colombian coach and the rest of the National Team.
It was not easy, because leaving the family was the most complicated. He finished elementary school at the Cardenal de Palmira school and high school at the inse institute from the same Valle del Cauca population.
“I had to graduate quickly, almost like packing. I did it because I saw myself in need or they didn’t give me permission to train and run, ”she recounted.
It is that he saw the need to leave in search of better results. If he wanted to be world champion, that forced him to change, and he did. In Medellín there was everything: the coach of the national team, the other teammates, doctors, physiotherapists, they went and they liked it.
“I got better. I spent a month and a half and I fixed myself and decided to go live there in 2017”, accurate.
He declares himself a quiet man, but who likes to pick up. At school it was hard to maintain good discipline. He would fight with his classmates and many times he was suspended. “Whenever they wore boxing gloves I put them on,” he says.
The school
They were regular presences at the school of Angela Rocio Torreshis mother, a woman who makes a living as a secretary at a medical center in the neighborhood Palmyra meadow.
“He was very picky, rather. The discipline was tough. He kept my mom suspended every eight days at school. He fought with his companions. With fists… I was doing well. Not boxing… One day they brought gloves and I didn’t put them on, ”she recounted.
Quintero already knew what it was like to be on the podium in a World Cup and in this his favorite competition, because last year he was bronze in Saint Quentin En Yvelines in France.
That time he was surpassed by Levreysen, who was the gold, and by Jeffrey Hoogland, who was left with the silver medal.
Alexander Quintero it’s his dad. He drives a tractor-trailer and several times the little one hit him. Still, on some occasions.
His father suffered from ‘vaccinations’. Kevin says that several times he had to pay so that his way of earning a living would not be burned.
“It was time to pay, there was no other way, and several times he traveled escorted by the constant strikes on the roads of the country,” said the new world champion.
Angela Rocío is a secretary at a medical center in Palmira and Kevin warns that he is privileged, since they never lacked for anything at home.
Once he retires, he wants to remain linked to the sport. He has in mind studying physical education, but he is also worried about veterinary medicine. He likes the salsa from the Niche group and from the Guayacán orchestra and from time to time he goes to the movies.
The new world champion was born in Palmyra on October 28, 1998, he admires the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt and in the cyclist the French champion Gregory Boyé.
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Lisandro Rengifo
Editor of EL TIEMPO
@lisandroabel
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