The sport in Asturias

Western route by El Transcantábrico

Jesús Castañón Rodríguez

To the West of the Paradise
The train of sport developed a prologue stage to go from Oviedo to the west of the Paradise, at the other side of the Eo estuary.

We departed from the main city of Asturias, a city for wrestling and above all for athletics. At the platform, the wrestler Héctor García and the Karate expert Óscar Vázquez incited to the memory of the epic poems by José Antonio Cecchini, Juan Cecchini and José María de la Puente.

The presence of the Olympic athletes Rocío Ríos and Martina de la Puente, as well as the trainers Juanjo Azpeitia and Pepe Teverga invoked the figures of José Aguirre and Eduardo Díaz; the trainer José Ramón Herrero Merediz; the cross-country athletes Margarita González, Ramón Granda, Jovino González, María Jesús Noriega, Luis Núñez, Merceces Peláez or Amparo Rodríguez; the long-distance runners José Arconada, Rufino Carpena, Argimiro Domínguez, Luis Nuñez or Manuel Polo; the javelin throwers Pelayo Botas, Rosa María Fernández Juan, Manuel García or Francisco Inclán; the long-jumpers Manuel González del Río "Campanal III" or Yago Lamela; the sprinters Melanio Asensio or Carlos Suárez; the specialist in hurdles José Luis Rubio…

The athletic history of Asurias has to do with the effort of the pioneers Asociación Atlética Avilesina (Athletic Association of Avilés), Club Atlético Gijonés (Athletic Club of Gijón), Sport Junior, Estudiantes Católicos (Catholic students) and Universidad de Oviedo (University of Oviedo). It has to do also with will to overcome all kind of situations by means of imagination, like the ones of the specialists in steeplechases who trained in the beach of Gijón called "San Lorenzo", jumping on folding chairs as hurdles or the javelin throwers who copied the technical gestures after viewing the stills the cameramen got to take away in the documentaries of the second half of the 20th century.

Vegadeo-Pravia
This section of the North Coast represents an authentic spectacle based on tunnels, cuttings or ditches, viaducts and bridges with drainage channels to save the rises in level.

It was thought for an strategic aim in 1914, it was built to join the Arms factory in Trubia with the Arsenal of State in El Ferrol and it started the construction works in 1922 between Gijón and Los Cabos.

The small bell, which woke the passengers up, rang under a full moon, a happy moon which shivered over the sea and from west to east it led the pace together with the estuary evoking the rowers of the Club de Mar of Castropol to the extent to rise in contrasts of rolling lands gradually.

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Traducción: María Elena Martín Pérez

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