“The goal was to reach the silver medal for the Games and to renew our worldwide record, so... as good as it gets, isn’t it?”. These are the words of Héctor Cabrera, student of Universitat de València, in Spain after his participation in the Paralympic World Championship of athletics in Dubai.

Héctor Cabrera, 25 years old and was born in Oliva, reaches his silver medal in javelin throw of F12 category (sportsmen with visual defficiency) with a 64.89 metres launch. The athlete competed against launchers with higher visual capacity than him. So, the winner was the Iranian Behzad Azizi, from a higher category (F13), who achieves the gold medal with a 65.04 metres mark. This explains that Cabrera reaches a worldwide record, in his category, F12. 

We asked for his coach Juanvi Escolano, we wanted to know what would be the message if he was in front of him. Cabrera, with his answer, tavel us back to the moment of his participation in the World Championship: “The first thin that my coach told me was: You are 15 cm for the gold medal!”. Cabrera adds which were his own words for Escolano: “The work is so well done and the next year we go to Tokyo”.

Cabrera arrived to the World Championship with a very good shape and with perspectives to fight for a medal. The worldwide runner-up confirms: “We know that we have worked very well and that the trainings were estremely good, that we were in a very good shape and at the best technical condition, so everything was matter of competing good, to be relax and enjoy the competition, and thus it was”.

The Europe Championship, the test for the Olympic Games at Tokyo

His reached mark has given him the passport to participate in the Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020, but before Cabrera will face the Europe Championship, “that does not harm at all because it takes place in competition time”, and as he said that it will be “the previous text for the Games”.  

The silver medal sums the list of triumphs of the UV’s student, with a gold medal in the Europe Championship in Berlin (2018), bronze medal in the World Championship of London 2017 and a paralympic diploma in Rio de Janeiro where he achieved the fifth position.