Sports writing (EFE).- Fernando Díaz del Río Soto, from the Canary Islands, who won gold in technical solo on Monday and became the first world champion in this competition, has admitted that he was not yet aware of what he had achieved.
“I feel super lucky, because with this new regulation you can be up one day and down another, but I have managed to maintain the preliminary score,” he said in a statement provided by the Royal Spanish Swimming Federation (RFEN).
Díaz del Río commented that before jumping into the pool he did not want to follow the competition, nor the scores of the main gold candidates, the American Kenneth Gaudet and the Kazakh Eduard Kim.
“I have not paid attention to the scores of my rivals, I preferred not to know anything, because I was afraid to relax or shit scared and I preferred to live from ignorance”, explained the canary.
The swimmer, after marking the best score in the free solo preliminary, said that since yesterday, Sunday, he tried to keep “a very cold mind” with a single objective: “not to draw any penalties.” “I knew that if this happened, it could be there (the gold),” he said.
Fernando ‘Fer’ Díaz del Río wanted to dedicate his success to his friends (Xavi Guillén and Mireia Hernández): “In the lowest moments I have found myself in this season, they are the ones who have supported me”.
The canary says that now he only has to celebrate success, despite the fact that there are still a couple of tests left. “We are embroidering it in this Championship”, said Díaz del Río. EFE