Pelota player Maite Ruiz de Larramendi: “They prohibited me from playing because I was a woman”

‘Flying I go’ moved to the ‘Sierra de Urbasa and Andía‘, in Navarra for honor to one of the most successful athletes in its history, Maite Ruiz de Larramendi, the best pelota player in the world after winning all the titles that can be achieved in this sport, the one who told her story to Jesus Calleja and everything it cost him to reach the top.

Eulate, the town where Maite Ruiz was born It was the place to which Jesús Calleja went to be able to see her house, her family and to be able to talk to her, with a true champion in this sport who has two gold medals in absolute World Cups, three silver medals, one of bronze, in addition to four World Cups, a Cuban Olympics, international tournaments…

But this is not the only thing she has won, she also prevailed over those who did not want her to be a pelota player for the simple fact of being a woman: “I started playing hand ballI played with the boys, no one tells them that they have to stop playing because their hand breaks, but I was a woman. “They told my father and my brothers that they were doing wrong.”

Given his explanations, Jesús Calleja asked him, astonished: “They banned you from playing ball? Who?”. Something that she affirmed and explained: “Those who are in the world of baseball, who saw it as bad that a woman was playing hand ball, that that was bad.”

And, when remembering his story, he reflected on this: “Why do I have to stop doing a sport I love? I don’t understand that, it turns out that in 1920 there were professional racket players and they were pelotaris, they were where there were more licenses for women than for men. They were professional athletes, the bravest ones left and went to America. Under Franco, they began to tell them that they couldn’t play ball, that it was bad and that they couldn’t renew their licenses.”

After explaining this, Maite told us how she returned to this sport after these bumps in the road, although not in the way she would have wanted one hundred percent: “I am returning because Aldón Larrión (who was her coach for more than twenty years) calls home to take a test, so the girls’ way out was no longer to play with their hands, I liked to play by hand, but we had to play with the paddle. I formed a couple with Susana Muneta and we started training and we won the Chapela when I was 18 years old and from there the National Team Coach came.”

Moment in which the titles do not stop coming, although he told us that he has not been able to contribute to Social Security like Pelotari during all these years, something for which he has been fighting for three years: “We have done it as a club, we are in a squad of thirteen pelotaris contributing, with our indefinite contract, that is quite a pride, but I am having to go all that way.”