Trap shooter Leonel Martinez said he is in better shape for the Olympics now than he was in Los Angeles in 1984.
CARACAS, Venezuela — It's been a long time, 40 years to be exact, since Venezuelan trapshooter Leonel Martinez last competed in the Olympics.
He was only 20 when he took part in the 1984 Los Angeles Games, but he's better now at 60 as he prepares for the Paris Games after the second-longest gap between Olympic appearances in history. It is said to be in a state of
“I have very little relevance to that number,” Martinez told The Associated Press about his age. “I feel better now than I did when I was 20. I have a lot more confidence now than I did when I was 25.”
Only Japanese dressage athlete Hiroshi Hokke waited longer to return to the Olympics. He first competed in the Tokyo Games in 1964 and returned to the Beijing Games in 2008.
Martinez, a native of Ciudad Ojeda in the western oil state of Zulia, wasn't planning on waiting this long. After finishing 41st out of 70 at the Los Angeles Games, Martinez was scheduled to compete at the 1988 Seoul Games, but he became preoccupied with personal and career commitments.
He founded a company that produced disposable medical supplies such as scrubs, and met his future wife, Magary Chacin. The couple had two children.
However, he felt that something was missing in his life. Nearly 30 years after retiring from his sport, Martinez has decided to pursue his dreams again.
“Something in me was awakened. A new spark was born in my life,” Martinez said in an interview at a hotel in Venezuela's capital Caracas.
He returned to the sport in 2011 by qualifying for the Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Another trap shooter from South America served as his inspiration. Peruvian Francisco Boza, who won silver in this event in Los Angeles in 1984, convinced Martinez that age was just a “state of mind.”
In 2015, Martinez was amazed to see Boza, then 50, win gold at the Toronto Pan American Games, defeating an opponent half his age.
It took a few years before I started having success at regionals and regained my confidence.
Martinez won a silver medal at last year's Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, securing a spot in Paris. He missed out on the gold medal by one point to Jean-Pierre Brol, a 41-year-old from Guatemala.
“Why are so many people unable to realize their dreams and goals? It's because they gave up too easily,” Martinez said. “You have to endure. The more you try, the closer you will get to that goal.”
Martinez is practically born into the sport.
He was a teenager when his father, Alonso Martinez, who also competed internationally, started letting him use a gun to learn trap shooting. Trap shooting is a training exercise that requires precision in hitting clay targets repeatedly in the blink of an eye.
“I loved it from the beginning,” Martinez recalled.
Martinez became the first American to win a silver medal in skeet shooting in Caracas in 1983, one year before competing in the Los Angeles Olympics.
Martinez said he entered these Olympics “with a lot of uncertainty” and acknowledged that the tension, anxiety and pain he experienced impaired his performance.
The Venezuelan archer says now that his experience allows him to feel the same emotions he feels when competing in the Olympics, but in a more relaxed form.
“There are ways to control them,” Martinez said. “Trap shooting is different from other sports such as soccer or tennis because it is more mental than physical.”
