Translator: Nicholas Nicou Reviewer: Denise RQ
Before I started,
I wanted to score a three-pointer to release all that adrenaline,
because you've just made my hair stand on end.
I'm 38 years old,
and I spent 22 years chasing a childhood dream.
Fulfilling it, winning, losing, suffering, and having fun.
I've been lucky enough to live in three different continents,
in countries such as Russia, the USA, Brazil, and Turkey.
I started my dream, my career, at the age of eight.
I wanted to be the 1,500 m Olympic champion.
Athletics: surpassing yourself,
reaching and crossing that finishing line, being the best.
By chance, basketball came into my life.
And I decided to leave individual sports behind
and move over to team sports.
For me, someone who's very -
I came from a sport that was about surpassing yourself,
and I didn't realize that this desire that we all have for winning and improving
well, now implied having 11 teammates.
I'm one of those people who learns by making mistakes.
As I grew up, I began to realize that I couldn't win matches alone.
Perhaps one match, but not a championship.
And with my teammates there, pushing myself,
we had a shared goal and ended up champions.
Over all these years,
I have suffered from being compared to a very famous basketballer
called Pau Gasol.
"The female Pau Gasol".
(Laughter)
(Applause)
I was told in thousands of interviews,
"If you earned as much as Pau," "If you were as famous as Pau,"
Pau this, and Pau that.
(Laughter)
So I thought, if I just sit here,
lamenting how rich I could've been, how famous I could've been,
I don't think I ever would have got here.
To the goal, right?
I'd be sad, I'd be negative,
and I was simply compared to a great sportsman, to Pau Gasol.
Now, when we're all bragging about sportswomen,
"Look how good we are, how much we earn,"
I want to ask you something:
in the last Olympics, we women won 11 medals
compared to the 7 won by the men.
We're in a crisis, right?
So I'll tell you, rather than asking you:
we're always in crisis, we don't have the same resources.
It's tough, but that's how it is.
When I'm asked what I want, I don't want the same as Pau.
I want to have the same resources as Pau.
I want to train in the same sports halls,
I want to travel in the same planes as they do
I want to have the best training times,
so that I can be a better sportsperson, to succeed and achieve my goals.
We are women.
(Applause)
We've got lots of weapons.
All these years, by making mistakes, winning, losing,
I've learned something; one word: vulnerability.
An incredibly important word.
We have to learn to be vulnerable, to ask for help.
It's not a big deal.
We take off that Superwoman cape and ask for help.
In my life, there are two factors which have had a big influence
on my sporting career and my personal career.
When I was 18, I lost my mother to a 19-day cancer.
I wore that Superwoman cape, of a sporting heroine for a long time
because I didn't want to show my pain.
I hadn't realized it was stopping me from moving forward.
I didn't realize it for many years.
Until I turned to my family.
Family, which is so important to everyone. To sportspeople, journalists.
I asked for help to get rid of all the pain that I had inside.
At 35 years of age, which is quite advanced for an elite sportsperson,
we all see retirement as a cliff-face.
We're terribly scared of no longer being Amaya Valdemoro, Pau Gasol, Rafa Nadal.
We're scared of the future, because we've dedicated our body and soul
to a hobby turned into our job.
When I was 35, I broke both of my wrists in a play during a match.
This injury made me a better person.
It made me see that human beings are selfish.
That we complain and protest.
We don't see the positive side, or consider those who have less than us.
I had to ask for help again. I had to ask to be washed, to be fed,
and I had to overcome an anxiety
which even today, when I remember it, is still here within me.
Anxiety about never again being able to compete,
about not retiring on a basketball court.
There's something within us which gives us strength.
I had my most terrible, truly awful 24 hours after this injury.
The following day, after they had told me,
"You won't be able to compete. If you recover, it'll take eight months."
Well, being here today, proud, and in front of all of you,
I can tell you I recovered, and after four months, I became myself again,
that a year and a half later,
I look at the case with all the trophies I have won in my sporting career
and I see a plaster cast, which is my Olympic gold medal,
the one I couldn't win on the court.
Why?
Because it made me whole again here, inside,
it made me a better person.
And nobody can take that away from me.
Today, I've been retired for two years and I have two projects,
one started in 2006,
and both fill me with happiness and make me feel proud.
Almost as much as when I scored that winning three-pointer.
One is a campus that I have, for girls,
- interestingly, 100 girls and 20 boys are signed up, more or less -
where I try to teach the values of sport.
And where, above all, they can have fun, cooperate, and get along.
The campus is so successful I also wanted to give the opportunity,
the type I didn't have, to 18-22 year old girls,
to improve those parts of their game which are a bit worse,
to be able to work on them so that the next season
they feel proud about what they've been able to learn.
Back to comparisons. My campus has zero sponsors.
Whereas Pau's campus -
(Laughter)
But I do it, I love it, and this will be its ninth year.
(Applause)
For my next project, also associated with sport, of course:
I want to be able to help
all the young children who want to play professional basketball,
I want to help them enjoy sport
by setting up a campus in the USA, the "Mecca" of basketball.
But the main objective is sport and education.
It's as important to exercise, to feel good about yourself,
as it is to exercise your mind; if not, we'd never achieve our goals.
Through the contacts that I've made over the years,
I hope that the NBA, with which we've started talks,
will help me establish an incredibly successful campus.
So that's me, Amaya.
I hope that, following my example,
some of you will be able to see the positive side of life
because we all have one.
I hope that life smiles upon you, just as it has smiled upon me.
(Applause)