First Olympic Diplomas arrive

Miguel Induráin. Cycling. He was born in Villava on 16th July 1964. The second of five brothers from a family of farmers, at the age of ten he was given a second-hand bicycle to ride the twenty kilometres between Villava and Alzorriz, his mother's home town. When he was eleven, he got his first racing bicycle and in 1975 he took part in a degree program race for young riders in which he finished second.

The following week, in his second degree program, he won his first victory. In 1976 he began to ride for the Club Ciclista Villavés. His biographers say that as a boy he learned the lesson of suffering. A gymnastics teacher explained to him that the great American athlete Lee Evans, gold medallist in the 400 metres at the Mexico Games, said that the secret of his success was to be able to endure greater pain than others.

In 1982 he joined the Reynolds subsidiary team. He left the programs of study and dedicated himself to cycling. The first year was one of adaptation. In his second year in the category he won his first major victories: the Navarre and Spanish amateur cycling championships. She finished the year with a victory in the Vuelta a Salamanca, where she also won a stage. By then he was already one of the most promising riders in Spanish cycling.

Few people know that, before competing in Atlanta '96, Miguel had already been an Olympian. In mid-1984, before signing for his first professional team and after fill in nineteen amateur victories, he was selected to take part in the Los Angeles '84 Games, which at that time were contested by non-professional riders. At that time he was an unknown, a twenty-year-old kid with dreams of glory who didn't even finish the test road race: "In Los Angeles we were amateurs. We didn't arrive in the right conditions, we weren't focused. The atmosphere was very nice, but the results were terrible. We went on an adventure". Always, with its capital plural. "We did", "we went", "we ran"? Miguel has created a school, he has imposed a style.

Excerpted from Olympic Tribune. (Author: Fernando Olmeda. April, 2016)

The diplomas

Ricardo Aldabe. Swimming (5th place).

Dionisio Muñoz, Weightlifting (6th place) Born in Pamplona on 29 March 1961.
He obtained an Olympic Diploma when he came sixth in the category up to 62 kg.

He took part in the Mediterranean Games in Casablanca where he came 5th and was crowned champion at the Mediterranean Games in Latakia in 1987.