“There is no rest to succeed”, the story of Sema Nancy Ludrick, the first indigenous woman from Nicaragua to participate in the Olympic Games | Other Sports | sports

Sema Nancy Ludrick became notorious when she became the first indigenous Nicaraguan in the Olympic Games, those of Tokyo 2020. She did not get on the podium, but she registered the best mark for a Central American in the 64 kilograms of weightlifting, thank you, as she told Efe, to his natural physical strength, but also mental.

At 23 years old, she owns the Central American brand in the Olympic Games established precisely in Tokyo, with 87 kilos in snatch and 115 in clean and jerk, but she had already stood out at the Pan American Games in Lima 2019 by being the best in Central America by lifting 201 kilos, which gave him the ticket to Tokyo.

Used to hearing that weights are not a sport for women, Ludrick said that it is hard to play the role of mother, wife and high performance athlete at the same time, but she insisted that the key is to forget everything every time she enters the gym. gym for elite athletes at the Nicaraguan Sports Institute (IND), in Managua.

“It’s tough, but I’m always ahead”

“It’s hard, but I’m always ahead (to) reach the Pan American Games, because in Central America I’m the best, so I’m working hard. I don’t care (nothing), when I enter this gym, my mind changes, I make other decisions, my goal is to train, I forget things around the house, the child (son) I have here near the CDI (maternal), no It worries me a lot, what I do is train ”, he explained.

The athlete does not appear to be a native until she speaks. Her Miskito accent is easily recognizable in the Pacific of Nicaragua, where she arrived as a teenager despite her father’s discontent.

“He said that this is a man’s job, that it was not a woman’s job, and also my family, my brothers told me, you’re going to become like a man,” he recalled.

Her first medals in Managua, where no woman on the Caribbean coast had achieved one, just two weeks after entering a gym, softened her family, but did not convince her.

Difficulties

Ludrick had to run away from his home to Managua at age 14, with the complicity of his older brother, Teófilo, to achieve his dreams, because by then his coach had already convinced her that he was a marvel, which was reinforced by a group of Cuban coaches in the capital, where he continued to win medals.

But it all fell apart in 2016, when she got pregnant. She decided to leave the sport and moved to Bilwi (North Caribbean Autonomous Region) together with her husband, also the weightlifter Orlando Vásquez Jr., to start a new life, now from university.

With the Central American Games in Managua 2017 in front, Vásquez and the Cubans convinced her.

“The Cubans told me that women who come from childbirth come stronger, they say that the Chinese are like that, that women send them to give birth and then put them to do weights and gain more strength,” he said with a laugh.

With ten months of training and the support of her husband, a national and regional multi-gold medalist, she won two silver and one bronze medals. Since then he has not stopped, not even after Tokyo. “If I miss two days of training it is as if I lose a week,” he said.

Despite his natural talent, he attributed his success to discipline.

“We take it as a job, from 2017 until now, we do not have vacations, because of discipline, to achieve success there is no rest, if you do not train harder you improve more”, he stressed.

German ancestry

Although she considers herself a totally indigenous woman, Ludrick is of German descent. His grandfather Germán Ludick, without the “r”, was in the community of Waspam (north), when the Sandinista revolution arrived and decided to “burn” his passport and assume Nicaraguan nationality, later he went to a war shelter in Honduras and met his Miskito grandmother.

“I don’t know some of my uncles, recently they called me from Germany, from Spain, they told me: Niece, I’m looking for you. They sent me messages, they congratulated me, they said they were going to support me, that they did not know that I was training weights, one of my cousins ​​from Spain says that she was motivated and is training weights, she says: I want to be like my cousin, “he said.

Now Ludrick also wants to go to Europe with her husband, specifically to Paris, but not on a romantic trip, but to the 2024 Olympics. There is only one problem, Nicaragua has only one place for both of them.

But love has led them to think of a plan: She will look for the merit classification and he will go for the invitation quota. They both cheer each other up, and Ludrick says that’s his greatest strength. (D)