On Friday, 28 May, UIC Barcelona hosted the closing event for the 2020-2021 sporting calendar, a session attended by former player and professional football coach Juan Carlos Unzué. He has left behind his professional career to face amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease that he was diagnosed with in 2019.

The event was opened by the vice-rector for the University Community, Esther Jiménez, who stressed that “although this year the opening ceremony of the sporting calendar could not be held due to COVID-19, it is a victory to bring together almost a hundred students to close the calendar.”

The Head of Sports at UIC Barcelona, Ernest Martínez, expressed his thanks “to all the students who participated in the Catalan University Championships during the months of April and May”. Martinez's speech aimed to take stock of the 2020-2021 sporting calendar, "an unusual year due to the pandemic, which has led to the internal leagues of the University being cancelled. However, we won medals in several categories of the individual Catalan championships, and UIC Barcelona students were represented in almost all sports disciplines at a Catalan level.”

The institutional speeches were accompanied by gratitude expressed to the guest speaker at the event, Juan Carlos Unzué, who was accompanied by Daniel Rossinés, a swimmer who is about to face a solidarity challenge called the Upside Down Challenge to raise funds for ALS research.

In his talk entitled “Don't count the days, make the days count” Unzué transmitted his perspective on life after he was diagnosed with ALS, a neurodegenerative disease that affects motor neurones in the brain, the brain stem, and the spinal cord. Juan Carlos Unzué described his personal daily struggle against ALS by linking it to hard work, the will to overcome, and sacrifice; values that, according to the speaker, “every athlete has”.

The swimmer Rossinés also gave a talk after the presentation by the former football player, and described the Upside Down Challenge solidarity project, a challenge that aims to raise awareness of ALS and raise funds for research into this disease.

Rossinés, apart from being passionate about sport and open water swimming, has already achieved a great unprecedented challenge that he had set himself: to swim all the way along the full coastline of Catalonia, from Portbou (Girona) to Les Cases d’Alcanar (Tarragona), in only 24 days. The result was that Rossinés managed to swim for 400 kilometers and raised more than 85.000 euros for ALS research through the Luzon Foundation.

After the success of this first challenge, the swimmer has another goal in sight that he intends to achieve this June. To achieve his main objective of raising more funds for research in the Luzon Foundation, he will swim around the island of Menorca (130 kilometres) over a period of 7 days.

At UIC Barcelona we would like to thank the two guest speakers for their participation in the sporting calendar closing event, and as was mentioned during the event, the University will also help research into this disease by making a donation to the Luzon Foundation.