“Don't play with my feelings!” That might be a line from a pop song. But that's actually the reaction of Alexis Martinez, a 23-year-old Communications student in Mexico City, at the news of her entering the 50m Rifle 3 Positions final at the World Cup in Munich.
It was her very first final. “My heart was beating really fast,” Alexis says (and that might as well be another line from that same song). “But I could control it. I was proud of myself.”
After quite a promising start (she had the highest score of the first round), Martinez slipped down to seventh place. Still, that didn't stop her smile. “It was one of my dreams,” she says cheerily. “And I've finally made it. I hope I can make it again, maybe with some medal!”
What makes Alexis happy – other than her performance – is also the weather. It is unusually warm and sunny in Munich. Some Germans wish for some rain to cool it off a little, but she – a real Mexican – feels at home. “It's great,” she says. “I'm used to it!”
It was not like that in London – where Alexis was 2 years ago, for the Olympic Games (she came thirty-ninth). “It's confusing there,” she says. “It rains, then it's sunny, then it rains again. Come on, just choose one!” Fortunately – at the next Olympics – that will be better. “Rio is kind of like Mexico,” she says. “A bit more humid, but that's similar.”
In the next days Alexis will go to Maribor [for the next World Cup Stage] and then back home. Which she likes. “If you don't find it in the Capital [that's how she calls Mexico City], it doesn't exist,” she says amused. Still, sometimes she need to leave it and go back to her hometown to train. This November, she'll have to fight for one of the first Olympic Quota places. “Maybe I'll take a semester off from college, to have more time to shoot,” she says. She definitely can't miss such a weather as Rio de Janeiro's.