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 Madrid native is now 49 years old and it has been three years since the person who was a great support in her career died. She leaves an eternal love and that tree that the former player asked the city hall to be transplanted from the family home to the park due to a change of address. Interestingly, this intimate event coincided in time with another with enormous repercussions: Valdemoro will enter the WNBA Hall of Fame, the women’s NBA. She will be the first Spanish woman to celebrate this milestone, as she was also the first to play in the American League. Between 1998 and 2000, she won three championship rings with the Houston Comets, when competing in America was like traveling to the future. Eight Spanish Leagues, nine Cups, one Euroleague and six medals with the national team adorn a unique record built thanks to extreme competitiveness. After being successful in the United States and Europe, Amaya remains in Alcobendas, so close to his olive tree.
To ask. What does he owe his father?
To respond. He was the most important person in my career. I left home at 14 to play in Salamanca and my mother died very young. We have to look back and see where we came from. Women’s sports didn’t provide food before and my parents always supported me. It was 1991, there were no social networks or cell phones and they traveled to see me at all the games, in Salamanca and abroad. My mother died of cancer which took her 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 for the first few years. If I got where I am, it was thanks to him. He was very honest with me about the good and the bad. It put my feet on the ground. In the elite you can believe what is not.
Q. Where did this competitive nature come from?
A. It’s innate. My father laughed… He challenged me to a race, because my first dream was to be an athlete, we were going to swim with my sister… I’ve always been very competitive. At school I competed with 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…
A. 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. It did not generate platelets. They told my parents to prepare for the worst.
Q. And now she enters the WNBA Hall of Fame. What does this mean?
A. It’s very strong. I thought the most I could achieve would be 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 that of Fernando Martín. I played, I showed I could, but the team was the best in my position. It was a big turning point for my career. The Spanish League then was not what it is now. 500 people came to see us and there they filled pavilions with 20 thousand. My colleagues have appeared in television ads for Nike and credit cards. We would go to eat and they would recognize us and invite 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?
A. It really impacted me because I saw what professional sport was like. Here I was very competitive and there everyone, everyone, was like me. In Spain I trained with everything I had, I fell and I didn’t understand how everyone wasn’t like me. In the United States it was even worse, I went to train with fear because the others were so competitive that I was afraid of failing. This made me understand that in Spain I had to change some things about myself so that my colleagues didn’t feel small. My figure generated the same thing I felt in the WNBA. I became a better team player and learned to demand. I was like that, I demanded of myself and others.
Q. What did your time in the United States mean for Spanish basketball?
A. I led the way. I was the first Spaniard to be elected in the sketchin 1998. That year was also Betty Cebrián, who entered as a free agent. I feel more recognized outside of Spain than here. It’s been like this my entire career. Which female athletes were famous in Spain at the end of the century? Conchita Martínez and Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario.
Q. And how was the game in the WNBA?
A. Physically they were going at such a speed that I asked myself: What is this? On the first day I was given a huge book with many parts. I was hallucinating. This cost me a lot. I left alone. We travel a lot. In Spain we were always together as a team and there they gave diets and each person was 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?
A. In the elite, I often felt very alone. The higher you are, the more alone you feel. I went alone to Russia, to the United States, to Brazil… I lived in a time of awakening in women’s sport when they only talked about me. Many teammates must have felt bad because they trained like me, it was difficult 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 this?
A. Because she was very ambitious. I played to be the best. At that time it was very shocking that he said that. At the age of 24 I started seeing a sports psychologist, who then only spoke to Benito Floro. I saw that I was leaving the games. I received this help to be better. Many things in my life influenced me, my mother’s death, the fact that I didn’t suffer, leaving home so early… Psychologists help you get to know yourself better.
Q. What image did this give?
A. They tell me: how cool you were! If people knew I didn’t believe… I knew I was good, but I saw a rival and thought I didn’t know how to do some things. Then I would go out on the track and I didn’t care who was in front of me. I was going after them. Being competitive is very good for elite sport, but terrible for normal life, because you have this level of demand for everything. Even today I can’t play many things. At my house we played cards on Sundays after lunch and I had to stop. If she were nice? I didn’t care, I was there to win and I said so. That didn’t go down well.
Q. Did this ambition make withdrawal more difficult?
A. Withdrawal is very difficult. They took away the engine that moved me, the competition, win or lose. For me it was very difficult. I never had the nervousness I had when I competed again. In professional sport 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. This is not good for life. 10 years after I retired, I had a disaster and had to live with my father.
Q. And today?
A. I am really happy. Life teaches you. I learned more from defeats than from victories. When you win you don’t think you did anything wrong. In difficult times, when I was at my lowest level, I learned very valuable lessons.
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