2024 has been a year of many incredible experiences for the athlete Amalia Ortuño, who is now a Pentacampeona Mundial de Crossfit Adaptado.
She has won many gold medals through her performance in Crossfit: she is 4 times the fittest athlete in the world, she has participated in the European Bicampeonato, she was champion of Wodcelona (Europe’s biggest adapted competition); she also participated in a Latin American Championship and has the title of “FittestonEarth” athlete (Crossfit’s biggest title); without forgetting the 3 titles she has in Wodapalooza (the second biggest competition in the world).
To mention another of her achievements, Ortuño is one of the 100 Powerful Women of Central America, according to the list of the finance and business magazine Forbes. The magazine emphasized her talent, dedication, sports achievements and the influence she has had on people, contributing to the path of future generations.
“For me it is an honor to be an influential person, I am very happy and grateful for this recognition, it is something very important that came into my life at a very nice time, it has given me great satisfaction to see the fruits of all the effort reflected in Forbes. I did not expect this news, it was a very nice surprise, to know that my whole process has finally reached many people, the message to move forward, not to give up, that life goes on and that being resilient we can achieve many things,” said Amalia.
The Costa Rican athlete, who is living in Santa Ana, continues working in her Interior Design company and is more fully involved in sports. She divides her time: half for her work day with the design and the other half in training, part of the professional sport.
9 years of a diagnosis that changed her life
9 years ago, Amalia was diagnosed with a birth problem in her hips and in a surgery to try to correct the problem she had neurological damage in her left leg – 2 nerves of her leg were damaged-, this caused muscle loss, weakness and a lot of pain; then in a surgery two years ago, for an ovarian tumor, she had neurological damage in her right leg (of 4 nerves).
Due to the neurological damage, the pain increased in areas such as: the navel, lower abdomen, hips, quadriceps, thighs and outer side of the leg, up to the knee.
It is a degenerative disease that is diagnosed in young adulthood.Amalia was 28 years old when she learned about her disease.
Her most recent operation
Four months ago she had surgery on her spine, in which they implanted a device in her spinal cord to control chronic pain. It was a very innovative surgery, it is the first time it is done in Latin America, in Costa Rica and in a high performance athlete in the world.
It is a device that is controlled through an application on the cell phone and what it does is to send electrical impulses through the spinal cord to the brain, to correct the neurological damage signals that reach the brain incorrectly and control a little of the chronic pain.
“It was really two surgeries: the first one was a week before and the second one a week after. The surgery has been quite successful, the pain has been controlled enough, it is not a curative surgery, it does not remove the pain completely, but it controls it enough, which makes me very happy, said the world champion of Adapted Crossfit.
Regarding the details of the surgery, it was a procedure that gave Amalia a bit of fear “because it was quite invasive and, in addition, being something so new obviously scares, despite this, I think that with this we are setting a precedent in the sports world and in athletes, by trying this treatment, which I thought – someone has to be the first person to have it – to start seeing results, as it was the first time it was applied in an athlete and that – if it had to be the first, it would be so -. I also wanted to regain the quality of life that I had lost because of the constant pain; despite the fear, I was very excited to have a new option to try and very hopeful that everything would work out.”
The surgery lasted 6 hours. For the athlete, the recovery has been difficult because, at the beginning she felt a lot of pain, she had restriction of movement, “we had to let the body begin to heal so that the implant would stick and not be rejected, then there has been much restriction of movement that little by little we have been recovering, however, there are other restrictions that are permanent, but in general, I’m happy with the result!
It has been quite an important learning process for the athlete from San Jose. She has had a total of 7 major surgeries, so it has been a theme of learning to be patient, resilient, perseverant, to not give up, to keep going despite the obstacles.
Ortuño has grown a lot as a person and mentally to be stronger and to see obstacles in a different way, “as a life opportunity, as a new resurgence, every time I have to start from scratch after each procedure, each process, then it has really been a very challenging stage of life, but very rewarding at the same time where I have been able to realize my dreams, achieve my goals along with the people who accompany me, who are my family, my friends, my partner, my team made up of trainers, doctors, physiotherapist, psychologist, nutritionist, among others: coaches, doctors, physiotherapists, psychologist, nutritionist, among others, we have been able to build a very nice team and without their help, it would not be possible, so I am very grateful and blessed.”
How does she see her disability today?
Amalia Ortuño today sees her disability as a blessing in her life, “it sounds a little strange but what took something away from me at some point, gave me much more than I thought I could have, or could achieve”.
She admits that if she had not had a disability, she would not have become what she is, she would not even have the mental and physical strength, the will to keep fighting for life, to show the world that there are no impossibilities, that there are no limits. At the beginning she was very scared, angry, frustrated, she thought her life was ending and after that, she understood that life was just beginning and that wonderful things were ahead of her.
“I tell all people who have a disability or just know about it, that it is not the end of the world, but it is a stage to re-emerge and get to know ourselves again, to build ourselves again and start fighting harder for what we have always wanted. Many times we think that things are one way and then we close ourselves in that thought, but when we understand that it is time to let go and open our eyes to what life and God have ahead, is when we begin to discover new things and when many opportunities begin to open; in the end we can achieve more things than we thought we could,” she added.
In Amalia’s hard moments, who has been present?
Her family, friends and work team have been key in every moment of her life.
Although the sport she practices is individual competition, there is a giant team of people behind everything, who have made it possible for her to achieve her goals. For her, to choose just one would be difficult because all of them have always been there, each one has a fundamental role.
What does sport currently mean to Amalia and how has it transformed her life?
In the opinion of the inspiring tica, sport saved her life, gave her back goals, dreams, hope in life, an illusion of achieving little by little small things and taking again the sense of life, “also, sport has led me to realize that maybe I have some physical limitations, but I got other things, blessings and capabilities that I did not know I had, because I did not need to develop them at another time. Sport for me is everything, my life without sport would not be, I always say it and I think it will continue to be something very important, because it has made me the person I am today, a resilient, empowered, persevering, disciplined and responsible person”.
What other sports besides Crossfit call your attention or practice?
Laughing, Amalia said that right now she is in the process of finding out what other sports she is interested in.
Last year she had the opportunity to go to the World Padel Tournament in Madrid, Spain, where the team was ranked number 5 in the world, “it was an incredible experience”. Padel is a sport that he likes very much and believes that for the future, it is a discipline that he would like to practice more fully; there is also Powerlifting or Powerlifting, “it calls my attention, I would like to experiment in this area to see how it goes, if I like it, how I feel and swimming has always enchanted me, it is something that I use as a complement to Crossfit, because in competitions, sometimes swimming tests appear”.
Training and nutrition
The training consists of 2 or 3 sessions per day, 5 times per week, depending on the season and the competitions that are close. Crossfit training is composed of a conditioning, strength and metcon part, “every day is different, you have to work on many things because there are several elements to practice for a competition and a full rest day is required, which is on Sundays”.
In terms of nutrition, it also depends on the time of year, but it is always based on being healthy, looking for all the necessary nutrients for the body, all the vitamins, supplementation, to be in an optimal state and thus, to arrive in the best way, always addressing the issue of weight, fat percentage. “In Crosfit you have to be strong but also agile, it is a complicated issue because to be strong you must have a lot of muscle mass, but to be light you should have less muscle mass, then you have to reach an exact point for the competition where you are agile and strong, which makes it challenging.”
2024 Competitions and those to come
A week ago, Amalia arrived in Costa Rica from the World Championship, with which she closed her competitive year of Crossfit.
She says that they will start working on the recovery from the surgery, which is not 100%, because they had to interrupt it and in this regard, she needs to give her body time to finish healing, for this year there is no more competition.
“We will begin to work with an eye towards 2025, which would start in March and from there we start in May, then in June, I think August and September I hope the World Championship,” she said.
Visualization
On the competitive side, Ortuño wants to continue competing for a while longer, she still feels she can give more and achieve many things, therefore, she wants to continue winning world championships, how many? she does not know, but as long as her body allows it, she wants to go ahead and then, if given the opportunity, to practice other sports that interest her and see the possibility of competing with any of them.
Her personal visualization, she would like to be part of motivational talks for companies, of empowerment for women, which is something she has been doing for some time now and is something she is passionate about. She hopes to reach more people, in fact, her purpose this year was to be able to give international talks and she has already been to some of them. “I want to reach more people in the world with my story and this whole process, to help them also to fulfill their goals and dreams as I have been able to do”.
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Virtues and defects
We asked Amalia about the virtues and defects that she notices about herself, and she considers herself a responsible person, disciplined, very resilient, dreamer, fighter, friendly, with a giant heart, because she gives a lot to people, she likes to treat people well, to have friends, to talk to people and to touch lives.
Regarding her defects, she considers that she is not very patient, stubborn, it is hard for her to accept a no, she struggles a lot with that, it is also hard for her to let things go at the beginning, and then she does it well, “but it is hard for me, I am afraid of change”.
What would you like to see change in the country for the benefit of people with disabilities?
In Costa Rica, the CrossFit Adapted athlete hopes that when children are young, at school, they are educated a little more about the topic of disability. “I have experienced, for example, that when they are very young children, they are not afraid to meet a person with a disability, or to understand what a disability is. As they grow up, the same society and the same families teach them that disability is not normal, that maybe it is not something good, so to speak, and that is where we start to create a lot of prejudices and things in children, that when they grow up they see disability as a limitation and as something bad, when it is not really like that, that is why I would like that from an early age we teach them to understand and respect disability, respect it from the point of view of parking spaces for people who really need them, to explain why they are needed, to teach them that spaces must be accessible and that we are all equal, to begin to mix a little perhaps, people who have disabilities with people who do not and teach us that, in the end we can all coexist in the same space, doing exactly the same things, but in different ways, “She said.
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And so, Amalia shared a valuable message for everyone: “In this life we have many opportunities and many times we do not see them, because we are focused on something that we think is for us and we are not realizing that, actually many things happen in front of our eyes, the moment we decide to open our eyes and see those other opportunities, is when a world begins to open up in front of us, that is when we begin to discover many things that we were not seeing before”.
For her, life is not easy, life is ups and downs and that is normal, “I believe that in those low moments, are the moments that prepare us to be ready to reach the top, I believe that in this life we all fulfill dreams, sometimes it costs us a little more, but that process is preparing us to be ready to achieve them when it will really be the right time to enjoy them and to understand all that, my life motto is, -be careful with what you want because you will get it-, it is a powerful phrase with which our mind can help us to achieve our goals and dreams or to destroy them and never achieve them, our mind is very powerful and it depends on us and what we think about what we are going to achieve, the negative leads us to the negative and the positive leads us to positive things”, he expressed.
As you can see, Amalia Ortuño is an inspiring tica, an athlete full of learning and reflections, undoubtedly resilient and it is through resilience, confidence and faith, in addition to vitamin people, with which we can go far, so we predict a future of greater achievements both personally and competitively.
If you want to know Amalia’s step by step, you can follow her on her social networks: On Instagram @amaliaortuno .
