Sara Díaz, an athlete from Lanzarote, born in San Bartolomé, 26 years old, won the European Championship of Triplets and Women's Precision Shooting last July 14. Díaz, belonging to the Spanish Petanque Federation, has accumulated 14 medals with the Spanish National Team and eight Spanish championships won, among other awards. The athlete is becoming one of the best players in Europe whose dream is to become a professional.
In addition, among her medals are also the Medal for Sporting Merit from the Spanish Olympic Committee and the gold medal in the Women's Doubles Petanque World Championship. Not only that, since after being named Best National Player in 2019, King Felipe VI received her at the Royal House.
Sara Díaz's passion for petanque started at the age of 8, when she went with her father to play Canarian ball. "The following year, my father started playing petanque and I maintained more or less the same wrist game," she recalls. "They gave me a set of balls and I spent whole summers training until I got to the competitions," she says.
Despite the difficulty of revalidating the European petanque title, Díaz has made it a reality once again. "It is a pride and relief to achieve it," she expresses. For the training of this competition, the athlete has changed the way she carries it out. "Instead of taking it to heart, I would go to train but I didn't beat myself up in training because in previous years I did, so this change has allowed me to enjoy the road to the goal," she says.
Regarding the type of training she does, the Lanzarote native practices different mental situations and in the game itself. She also does precision and shooting exercises to improve for two days a week to which she dedicates an hour and a half a day.
Although petanque is not an unknown sport, "it needs more support, and I hope it has a boom that makes the administrations show their support much more," says the athlete.
On the other hand, Díaz has a YouTube channel where she tries to teach techniques to other athletes who are starting out in the world of petanque. In this way, she manages to help more people to obtain better results.
