Rodrigo Corona
Mexico, Sep 29 (EFE).- Olympic medalist Angela Ruiz spends her days away from the archery ranges busy in the kitchen, where she enjoys preparing food for her family, and assembling Legos, two tools that help her strengthen your concentration, key to success in your sport.
“Cooking and building Legos has helped me have better mental strength, to distract my mind in a competition when things are not going well and to gain patience. In the kitchen I can spend hours looking at the oven, without getting tired. It is the same mental work in an archery competition,” the Mexican, bronze winner in the women’s team event at Paris 2024, explained to EFE.
Ruiz doesn’t describe himself as a 24-hour athlete. It is defined as a person who dedicates himself to training and competitions, but once outside he spends his time in the kitchen, cooking desserts or dinners for special dates such as Christmas and New Year.
He also likes to assemble Lego figures, an activity in which he does not have a favorite, he only avoids those from the ‘Star Wars’ film saga, of which he is not a fan.
“I would not like to be only known for my career as an athlete, I am more than that, a human being with problems like everyone else. We are not machines to be focused on sports 100 percent,” added the native of Saltillo, city of northern Mexico.
Angela approached archery at the age of nine, after practicing gymnastics in her early years, and she did it for her brothers, who were already archers. He fell in love with this sport from day one. READ FULL STORY HERE>>>CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING>>>
In his first youth World Cup, in 2021, he realized that he could dedicate himself to high-performance archery, and since then his career has been on the rise until he reached Paris, a Games in which Mexico brought a full team in the discipline, something which I had not achieved since London 2012.
“Archery requires a lot of patience, discipline and perseverance because the more you shoot arrows, the more you improve and the difficulty increases. My dream is to one day make a perfect score,” he points out.
In Paris 2024, Ruiz debuted at the age of 18 in the Olympic Games and won a bronze medal with the women’s archery team, which she joined together with Ana Paula Vázquez, 23 years old, and who was in her second Games, and Valencia, one of the best Mexican archers in recent years, who in Tokyo 2020 obtained her first Olympic medal, a bronze in mixed teams.
Valencia, who has attended the last four Games, is one of Ruiz’s teachers and the one who shelters her at the beginning of her career.
“From Ale I have learned a lot about how she handles her nerves when shooting, the whole process she does before shooting, that she looks for anchor points before each shot and that makes her more constant,” said Ruiz.EFE
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