Every Sunday night, Hugo del Castillo turns on his laptop, opens Excel, and makes a schedule. In that document, he specifies everything he will do in the following week. It includes training, studying medicine, hanging out with friends, and video calls with his girlfriend, the Mexican Taekwondo champion.
Her name is Ana Zulema Ibáñez. He met her thanks to the sport he has been practicing since he was 10 years old. Although no one in his family knew about martial arts, Dragon Ball Z and Power Rangers were the main motivations for enrolling in the school next to his house.
He did it. He surpassed the 10 levels necessary to reach the black belt and began to represent Peru in international tournaments. In one of them, he met Ana Gabriela. Being in the same modality - Poomsae - helped them coincide on several occasions, and the friendship, after virtual conversations, turned into a long-distance relationship, but a solid one, two years and nine months ago.
"We have faced each other before. I think that at the moment of competition, we never have rivalry. We help each other. It's a healthy competition. We always keep our strategy to ourselves. However, we talk and laugh about our mistakes or correct each other. We don't make a big deal out of it. The distance? Normal. I see her often in competitions, and we always make calls and video calls. We are never disconnected," he told RPP before Lima 2019.
In the Pan American Games, both participated and did more than well: Peruvian Hugo del Castillo won the silver medal in Male Individual Poomsae, and Mexican Ana Zulema Ibáñez won the gold medal in Mixed Poomsae Pairs with Leonardo Juárez.
The ideal celebration? Watching the sunset in Lima and eating alfajores with her boyfriend, as the champion told the press after her performances in Lima 2019.