Remember (eng)

A time ago I entered for the first time to the exclusive site of the World Championship, Prague 2009. When I was navigating I clicked to a section called “photos gallery”. With surprise and astonishment I saw a photo that paralyzed me. It was a photo chosen by the people of Czech Republic. They had it, no one else. I had never seen it before. It was a photo where Roger Galván -El Negro as we called him- was smiling in the middle of four colorful dancers, three folk dancers and two other persons- surely from Prague.
He, in the middle, with his big smile, showing his joy during the Opening of the previous World Championship, in Puerto Rico.
“El Negro” died a few months ago in a basketball court. He finished playing the first quarter and he was seated on the bench talking with Horacio Goytía, his best friend from Santiago del Estero, when suddenly he felt dead to the ground. Nothing, even the fast medical intervention could did anything. When he arrived at the hospital he had already left us.
“El Negro” lived, breathed and enjoyed basketball all his life. He passed his best and his last moments at a basketball court. He was very lucky; he finished his life where many of us want to finish. He walked each Argentine province with basketball and he walked the world with Maxibasketball.
Whenever, I close my eyes I see him making a three points goal in a different place: Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, the United States, Slovenia, Costa Rica, Finland, Puerto Rico, Australia; in cities like Rio de Janeiro, Córdoba, Guaruja, Orlando, San Nicolás, Las Vegas, Paraná, Portland, Resistencia, Sydney, Buenos Aires, Brisbane, Santa Fe or walking in Monaco, Spain, Italy, Holland, Austria, France or just going in a tour, filming everything, (even the tunnels), trying to keep for himself all the wonder of the world. That world that was opened to him in those trips, that world he enjoyed like in each game, with his patience face of good people, with his honest smile, like the one on the photo. That is the way I will always remember him.
Now, some memories come to you: Filadoro the player of the well known “the airplanes of Platense”, the “Gallego” González, Mario Burgay, Janis Aboltnish from Latvia, “Patito” Sanchez, Fernandez, Riofrío, those who had the luck to die in a basketball court. Yes, I say luck, because there is not sweeter death for a basketball passionate than leave our life there, in a basketball court.
The death is the last stage of the life. It is an indissoluble and irremissibly part. It accompanies us all along our life but only appears once. It is like born. We do not propose it, we never decide when or where. If we are lucky, we born where and how we have to; if we are lucky we die how and where we have to.
The death of a sportsman is always shocking and promotes critics to the sport and to the sport practice. I do not know, nor I have never studied the statistics, but I think without any mistake that for each mature or young sportsman who dies in a game field, in any sport, there are millions of other human beings who die in extreme conditions, suffering, agonizing, by traffic accidents, by long and difficult diseases, tortured, in stupid and without scruples wars or on beds of hospitals. Nobody thinks about that list.
There is no way to avoid the death. There are ways to prevent it, to try to extend the time of life, to take care of the health and the fitness, to obtain a better quality of life -by the sport as a channel for the better health- to avoid the causes of diseases, but there is no way to avoid the death.
There is no better way to leave life that in the place where we like, suddenly, without suffering, enjoying a game. For that reason I remain with the smile of the Negro Galván . With the joy he shows on that photo, trying to feel something of what he enjoyed. He left his many medals, many t-shirts, memories, videos, thousand of photos with different uniforms from Argentina, in his deprived pride place.
Thank you for leaving that photo to us. Thank you for showing your example instead of leaving to us something for lamenting your loss. Thank you, Negro.

Ruben Rodriguez Lamas