In the Jardín de la Vega park, in Alcobendas, a very special olive tree has been growing for a few days. It was the gift that Amaya Valdemoro, the best Spanish basketball player in history, received from her father, Álvaro, when she turned 40. The Madrilenian is now 49 years old and three years have passed since the death of the person who gave her great support in her career. She is survived by an eternal love and by that tree that the former player asked the city council to transplant from the family home to the park due to a change of address. Curiously, this very intimate event coincided in time with another of enormous repercussions: Valdemoro will enter the Hall of Fame of the WNBA, the women’s NBA. She will be the first Spaniard to celebrate this milestone, having also been the pioneer to play in the American League. Between 1998 and 2000 he won three championship rings with the Houston Comets when competing in America was like traveling into the future. Eight Spanish championships, nine Cups, one Euroleague and six medals with the national team adorn a unique record forged thanks to extreme competitiveness. After having success in the United States and Europe, Amaya is still in Alcobendas, so close to her olive tree.
Ask. What does he owe his father?
Answer. He was the most important person in my career. I left home when I was 14, to play in Salamanca, and my mother died very young. We need to look back and see where we came from. Before, women’s sports did not provide food, and my parents always supported me. It was 1991, there were no social networks or cell phones, and they traveled to come and see me at every match, in Salamanca and abroad. My mother died of cancer which took her away very quickly, in 15 days. My father was a lover of all sports, especially cycling, and he dedicated himself to me. He was my agent in the early years. If I got to where I got to, it was thanks to him. He has been very honest with me through thick and thin. It put my feet on the ground. In the elite you can believe what you are not.
Q. Where does this competitive nature come from?
R. It’s innate. My father laughed… He challenged me to a race, because my first dream was to be an athlete, we went swimming with my sister… I have always been very competitive. At school I competed with the boys. The girls didn’t play much sport, and if they did it was basketball, athletics or volleyball, and if they had money, tennis.
Q. His biography is titled I was born fighting…
R. This happens because a year after I was born I almost died of illness. I had purple. I was hospitalized for two or three months. He did not generate platelets. They told my parents to prepare for the worst.
Q. And now she’s entering the WNBA Hall of Fame. What does it mean?
R. It’s very strong. I thought the furthest I could get was the FIBA Hall of Fame, but this is the pioneer, the American. When they told me I thought it was a joke. My time there was like Fernando Martín’s. I played, I showed that I could, but the team was the best in my role. It was a huge turning point in my career. The Spanish league then wasn’t what it is now. 500 people came to see us and there they filled the pavilions with 20,000 people. My classmates appeared in TV commercials for Nike and credit cards. We went to eat and they recognized us and invited us everywhere. They had an infrastructure like the men’s NBA. It was another world. I was there for five seasons and won three rings.
Q. How has playing there changed you?
R. It made a big impression on me because I saw what professional sports were. Here I was very competitive and there everyone, absolutely everyone, was just like me. In Spain I gave my all in training, I crashed and I didn’t understand how all the people weren’t like me. In the United States they were even worse, I went to train with fear because the others were so competitive that I feared failure. This made me realize that in Spain I had to change something about myself so that my classmates wouldn’t feel small. My figure generated the same thing I felt in the WNBA. I became a better team player and learned to ask. I was like that, I demanded of myself and others.
Q. What did your time in the United States mean for Spanish basketball?
R. I led the way. I was the first Spaniard to be elected in the draftin 1998. That year it also fell to Betty Cebrián, who entered as a free agent. I felt more recognized outside Spain than here. It’s been that way my entire career. Which female athletes were famous in Spain at the end of the century? Conchita Martínez and Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario.
Q. And what was the game like in the WNBA?
R. Physically they were going at such a speed that I asked myself: what is this? On the first day they gave me a huge book with lots of plays. I was hallucinating. It cost me a lot. I left alone. We have traveled a lot. In Spain we always went together as a team and there they gave you diets and each on their own. In Houston a lot of NBA players went to summer leagues and had fun with Barkley, Drexler… I was amazed. It was like being on Mars.
Q. What’s it like to live at the top?
R. In the elite I felt very alone many times. The higher you are, the more alone you feel. I went to Russia alone, to the United States, to Brazil… I experienced a period of revival of women’s sport in which only people talked about me. Many teammates must have felt bad because they trained like me, it was hard for them. I saw a lot in the victories, and even more in the defeats. I had a lot more pressure.
Q. How did you overcome it?
R. Because she was very ambitious. I played to be the best. At the time it was very shocking that he said that. At 24 I started going to a sports psychologist, who then only turned to Benito Floro. I saw that I was leaving the games. I got that help to get better. Many things in my life have influenced me, the death of my mother, the fact that I didn’t grieve, that I left home so early… Psychologists help you get to know yourself better.
Q. What image did it give?
R. They tell me: how strong you were! If people knew I didn’t believe in it… I knew I was good, but I saw a rival and thought I didn’t know how to do some things. Then I would get on the track and I didn’t care who was in front of me. I was going to them. Being competitive is very good for elite sport but terrible for normal life, because you have that level of demand for everything. Even today I can’t play many things. At my house we played cards on Sunday after lunch and I had to stop. What if she was beautiful? I didn’t care, I was there to win and I said so. It wasn’t good.
Q. Did this ambition make retirement more difficult?
R. Retirement is very hard. They took away the engine that moved me, the competition, winning or losing. It was very difficult for me. I never had the nerves I had when competing again. In professional sports you are in a bubble and when you leave you have to adapt to the world of work. In my day it was about training as much as possible. Not good for life. 10 years after I retired I had a disaster and had to move back in with my dad.
Q. And today?
R. I’m very happy. Life teaches you. I learned more from defeats than victories. When you win you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. In difficult times, when I was at my lowest level, I learned very valuable lessons.
