Brave Bazán back in the saddle

Gymnasts learn how to fall from a young age. Their bodies, honed from so many tumbles to the floor and time on the apparatus, and their minds, able to anticipate almost any form of impact, are trained for it. Many terrifying looking thumps result in bruises but nothing sufficient to prevent the athlete getting up and carrying on as though nothing had happened.

Christian Bazán, one of Spanish gymnastics' greatest hopes who won four medals at the 2008 European junior championships, was not so fortunate a month ago during training at the Blume High Performance Center in Madrid. For his new exercise routine on the parallel bars Bazán had reincorporated a move he had abandoned two years ago - a double forward somersault landing on the biceps. The exercise was nothing new for Bazán, yet requires a lot of arm strength and even more courage than skill; some gymnasts call the move "the blow" because of its shuddering impact.

"I didn't feel the force of the impact. My face was numb; I couldn't feel a thing"

Bazán did not complete the exercise as anticipated and fell. But instead of landing safely on the mat between the bars he crashed into one of the metal supports holding the apparatus together, completely destroying his face.

"I didn't feel the force of the impact. My face was numb; I couldn't feel anything," Bazán recalls. "I don't even think I lost consciousness."

What his coaches and colleagues saw - people accustomed to seeing injuries - was blood everywhere and Bazán twitching on the floor. The doctor who treated Bazán at a Madrid clinic said it looked like a traffic accident. It took surgeons four and half hours to reconstruct Bazán's face. He was 21 at the time, and had been at the Blume center since he was 13.

"The first few days were tough," says Dolores, Bazán's mother. "They induced a coma and when he came round he was very swollen. But the post-operative period went very well and he wasn't in any pain. I don't know what sportspeople are made of...."

After the shock, and the operation, came the real test: to look into the mirror. "I asked my mum for her cellphone and..." What he saw was a swollen face with many cuts, like small burns. "But now I feel pretty good," Bazán said a few days ago. "I'd like to get back to training."

That is now Bazán's main preoccupation. The fall happened just as the season was beginning and he was looking ahead to the European Championships in April and the Worlds in October, when the majority of the teams for the London 2012 Olympics will take shape. Bazán had been due to compete in Portugal just a few days before his accident.

He returned to Madrid a few days ago to begin, little by little, with some physical training. Gymnasts are probably the athletes who are most affected by pauses in training. It is almost as through the muscles forget the daily effort of practice. "I have to start from practically zero, but I'm motivated and I have a lot of enthusiasm," Bazán said last week.

The only visible trace of the accident is a little swelling, a couple of stitches above his lip and two small bruises. Bazán is happy to be back with his colleagues - "there's a great atmosphere in the team" - and in training; now that he has finished his studies, he has decided to dedicate himself to his sport.

The only thing Bazán does not wish to talk of is fear - a word almost prohibited for a gymnast. Will he try the exercise again? "I've done it many times. I had it perfect two years ago and I took it out of my routine. I did it perfectly before the fall. As a gymnast you get used to falling when we try exercises. It was just bad luck," he says.

With this determination - "he is one of those who say 'I'm going to do this' and he doesn't stop," notes his mother - Bazán has a clear objective. The same objective that compelled him to continue training for five hours every day even after narrowly missing out on Beijing 2008; his dream of representing Spain in the Olympic Games.