The quarantines that have brought headlong to everyone who has come to Tokyo for the Olympic Games they are not strange to Lucas Mondelo, Spanish women’s basketball coach, who has already experienced several when coming and going as coach of the Toyota antilopes of the Japanese league. Know the terrain and face the Games as an opportunity: to make up for the Eurobasket.
Mondelo (Barcelona, 1967), participant from the bench in a historic streak of the women’s basketball team, seven international championships without getting off the podium – including the silver medal in Rio 2016 and three European golds – assures EFE in Tokyo (Japan) that the team takes these Games as the opportunity to make up for the “hard blow” of the recent Eurobasket, in which they finished seventh and had “very bad luck.” Option that is presented to them just a few weeks later, something that happens “very rarely” in sport.
The Spanish team arrives at these Games in a new process of generational change, with more than 20 years of difference between the captain, the base Laia Palau (41 years old) and the youngest, the pivot Rachel Carrera (19) and with the memory of the historic silver of Rio, the first in Spanish women’s basketball. Another medal would be “a consequence, but not an objective”, which for Lucas Mondelo It must be to reach the quarterfinals.
They have been in Tokyo for a few days now, how has the team arrived and how is the adaptation being?
We arrived after a very hard trip, of about 30 hours between 8 hours at Madrid Airport (the flight was delayed due to excess weight), then 13 hours of travel, 5 in Tokyo-Narita doing the paperwork, and then arriving to the Villa, where we had dinner at 3 in the morning. It was a hard trip, but the joy makes everyone understand and understand that these things happen and there has been a very good attitude from the entire expedition.
We have been acclimatizing to the schedule for a few days, there are seven hours of difference and this produces a certain mismatch of the bodies with the ‘jet lag’, we have tried to fit in, because we are going to play at 10 in the morning, which is very unusual in basketball.
The team is doing quite well with its difficulty, and we are doing good training sessions. At the beginning there is always over-activity, because you are excited about the Olympics, that is not bad, what happens is that you are more imprecise. The team has a very good attitude, I knock on wood, something different than in the European, in which we were missing Alba (Torrens) and we had several important players played, in this case it seems that everything is fine.
The only thing is that what you win on the one hand you lose on the other, the Olympiad is going to be very hard, anyone can beat anyone, only the United States is far above the others, but the rest will be very even, it will be defined for details.
The Eurobasket was very marked by the positives of Alba Torrens and Tamara Abalde, how did they face this situation and what does it teach them for these Games?
I think it has made us stronger. The team, instead of collapsing, when we resumed training before coming to Tokyo, the team was not seen with the anxiety and stress of solving what happened there. They were, more than affected, held responsible, and with a good attitude. They are winners, a competitive team.
We have approached it in the following way: rarely do you have the opportunity to face a hard blow like that of the European and with such bad luck, to compensate and forget it, and in this case we have been given. So let’s go with that attitude.
I am not talking about a medal, which is very complicated, hopefully, we are going to compete for it, but I am talking about hitting the table again, after a Eurobasket in which we could win the three games we lost. We had bad luck in the one that got us into the medals, but we are Spain and here we are. That’s the attitude.
In fact, they fell against Serbia, who ended up being the champion.
It’s funny, look what fate is, a free kick and we would have taken a badge, I don’t know which one, but I am convinced that we would have taken one and Serbia would not have been champions. Other times it has been expensive, and this time it did not. When you cool down, you think that at other times we have had that luck of the champions. That is why there is a point of hope that all the misfortunes have passed and now we are going to have one more point of luck.
Until this Eurobasket, Spain had seven tournaments in a row without getting off the podiums. It is a pass for Spanish basketball.
And for basketball of all places, the only team that has done that is the United States, not even Australia, which has failed in some Olympics and some World Cups. Nobody has done it other than the US and the Soviet Union at the time, that is the value that people do not just realize, winning seven medals in a row and among them three worldwide: 2014 World Cup (silver), Olympiad 2016 (silver) and 2018 World Cup (bronze).
And with the whole situation of generational change in the national team, Alba and Tamara with covid, players like Silvia (Domínguez) and (Laura) Gil very touched, even so a free kick would have put us in the medals. But that has already happened, we are going to play the Olympiad perhaps the most even of the last 20 years and we have the European champion in our group (Serbia) and the fourth in the world ‘ranking’, Canada. I think it is the second strongest group and very even.
The goal is to qualify for the quarterfinals first, but the idea is to be first or better second, that makes you seeded in the quarterfinals and doesn’t run into the United States.
From that team that was silver in Rio 2016 to this, several players have changed and a certain generational change is taking place, with Raquel Carrera (19 years old), Maite Cazorla and María Conde (24).
It would be our third renewal, we already did one from 2012 to 2013, another towards the 2018 World Cup, and now it would be the third. The legs of the table that remain in the selection are picking up those that are entering, with their talent, their physique, their desire, and they are giving them the value and commitment of the selection and how we work, what are our objectives and how we get them, and that helps a lot.
Carrera is going to help us, but she is still 19 years old, let’s not put too much weight on her, because although she is doing very well, her head is furnished and she is very mature, but she is still 19 years old, and that at some point. moment can come out. But he is very good and will be very important in the future in the national team.
Cazorla is quite done and is already taking over, as ‘2’, ‘1’ and in annotation, where he is a prop. And Conde is a player with a tremendous physique, talent, but she has to find her place, which she is already doing, without rushing her, so as not to create stress for her.
This mix, which has cost, because between the fact that we have played few friendlies before the European and we paid it in the European, but there are already more automatisms, complicities, they know more, and I think we are going to take a little step forward. We are one step ahead of what we were able to do in the European. The only thing is that everything is very even and the Olympiad is tougher than the European one, but the challenge does not scare us.
You have been training in Japan for two years, how do you see Japanese society regarding these Games?
We are in a semi bubble, a bit isolated, but before going to Spain for the European Championship I was surprised that in recent months it took a turn: at first people were quite excited about the Games, but in recent months, how the level has risen of the pandemic in Japan have taken a bit of fear, it seems.
Inside here (in the Olympic Village) there is excitement, joy, they are still a Games, if the public at the opening will be a bit cold, orphan, but the spirit is palpable in the village. It goes a little lame, but it is an Olympic spirit after all, and it is the greatest thing you can live as an athlete.
Rio 2016 silver was a historic milestone for Spanish basketball, is a new medal a dream, something possible?
It is possible, but we will go step by step. First we are going to establish the team, the foundations for the future to hit again in the European 2023. Here you have to be in the decisive quarter-final match to try to get into the semis. We all dream of the medal, but it is not pressure. It is very difficult, in fact Spain has only won one in women, it should not be easy.
But the medal has to be a consequence, not the objective, a consequence of finishing making that team that has to represent us in 2023, of being competitive, if we achieve that there may be a consequence that is a possibility of a medal. The goal is not the medal, but to reach the quarterfinals and compete.