Hugo Ballester, karateka of the Universitat de València, nicknamed samurai by his teammates at the Cheste Sports Development Centre, will show off this perseverance, discipline and passion for Karate at the Polish Championship, where he will fight for the gold medal in the kumite category.
“My nickname at the Cheste Centre was samurai, my teammates said I was very disciplined and passionate about karate, I really like Japanese culture, I've always been crazy about karate”, jokes Hugo Ballester. The karate player, native of Onda, graduated this year in Physical Activity and Sport Sciences at the Universitat de València. “This academic year has been very hard, between the Degree Final Project, the internships, my work as an online physical trainer, training and competitions... It's been complicated to combine everything”, says Hugo. But if there is one thing that defines this samurai, it is perseverance, which leads him to always fight to the end in order to achieve his goals. “I have always been very persevering. I started karate very late, when I was 12 years old, —nowadays children start when they are 4 or 5 years old, when they are 6 or 7 they are already competing—I was always behind my rivals and having those years of disadvantage I had to face many defeats at the beginning and be very tenacious”, explains Hugo.
At age 22, this promising karate star has had a meteoric career, so much so that the shelves at his home in Onda are constantly accumulating trophies. In 2019 he won national gold in the Under-21 category; last year he added another success in the Spanish National Karate Championship, where he won silver in the senior category. To these triumphs must be added his call-up to the Spain National Karate Team, with which he has represented Spain in several international events, including the Ibero-American in Nicaragua, where he won silver. At university level he has won everything: in the CADU (Regional University Sports Championship) he won in 2020 and this 2022 he has repeated at the top of the podium. This season he has also won gold at the CEU (Spanish University Championship) held in Murcia. The event in Lodz will be his second participation in a European university competition: “In 2019 I participated in the European University Championship in Zagreb, where we won bronze as a team. It was an unforgettable experience, all contact sports were (karate, judo, kick-boxing, taekwondo) gathered in a kind of Olympic Village and on the last day there was a closing ceremony, a sports party, it was an incredible experience”, recalls the athlete.
Hugo Ballester will travel to Lodz together with the karatekas of the Universitat de València qualified for the European Universities Games: Patricia Peso, Iván Ferrer and Víctor Rubio. The team, under the guidance of their coach Rubén Rubio, will fight for the medals from 28 to 30 July. A few weeks before travelling to Poland, the Onda champion is completing his training preparation by focusing a little more on the physical part in order to be at 100% in Lodz, “the European Games are out of season, I took a short break after the club championships in June to rest a little, and then I went back to training. I'm working harder on my fitness and once or twice a week I train technique and tactics with my teammates from the University or the Club”, explains Hugo.
As a great samurai, for Hugo it is as important to train the body as the mind. “I do a lot of visualisation and meditation work. I try to visualise the techniques and performance I want to achieve in the competition, I also visualise the result, but above all I focus my mind on how I want to look in terms of technique and fluency in the marked movements”. Throughout the season, Hugo has a sports psychologist from the Universitat de València with whom he reviews his goals. “The UV Sports Service has helped me a lot; elite athletes, or students who are in a university team, have at our disposal a sports psychologist, physiotherapy, nursing and medicine, physical trainer... a series of services that are very useful”.
The UV karateka will fight for gold at the Lodz Games, without pressure but with the intrinsic motivation that characterises him: “Unlike what happens at the national championships where you know your opponents, at an international championship you can't compare yourself, you start knowing that there is a high level but you don't know all the karatekas, so it's not worth getting nervous. You often go into the competition with that mentality and then you realise that you do have the level and you reach top 3 or even first place, but it’s complicated to get an idea of what the result will be, you can only trust in your performance and the work behind it, go for it and enjoy yourself”.
Hugo Ballester has spent half his life on the tatami, with dozens of competitions behind him, and even so, “in the first round it's impossible not to get nervous", Hugo confesses. "In football you have 90 minutes to fix mistakes, but in karate you have a first round that lasts three minutes and if you lose it, the competition is over. In the first combat you always feel more pressure, then, depending on how you see yourself, the feelings change and you gain confidence; that's why the mental visualisation work I usually do is very focused on that first fight to break the ice”.
The European Universities Games will put the final touch to a great season for Hugo, who finishes as a graduate in Physical Activity and Sport Sciences and with several more titles under his belt. “In September the national league continues, I'm in second place, and my immediate goal is to win the league. I also plan to go to Turkey for an international championship. And to continue on this path, training, improving, working...” assures Hugo, a samurai's path, with perseverance and passion for karate as standards.
- Further information about the European University Games on the UVSports website
- Visit the official website of Lodz games
