Denisse
Fajardo (PER) |
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 When Peruvians hear the name Denisse
Fajardo, they immediately associate it with a gutsy, cold-minded player
who always kept her cool. Denisse was always consistent, whether in her
serves, or her passing, or her phenomenal outside hitting. In fact, it
could be said that she has been Peru’s best hitter from position four.
Determined and with a stern face, her very thinness never gave away the
fact that she was a fierce volleyball player. Rumour had it she lived on
sweets, hiding them in her bags when away on tour, which may partially
explain her slim figure. But maybe it was her light weight that gave her
the ability to jump so high, with a characteristic two-footed hop that
seemed more like a dry thud, but worked wonders regardless. |
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I first
remember Denisse from the ’86 World Championships in Czechoslovakia.
Against Brazil, she constantly kept hitting line, but the Brazilian
blockers kept misreading her stiff body language thinking she was going
to hit cross-court. In the semifinal against China, she was the best
attacker on the team, receiving more than her share of sets because the
Chinese middles were too busy following Gaby
and Cecilia
on the right. At one point, Peru took the lead with an amazing rally
that ended with a very high bump set from position one to position four,
where Denisse buried the ball on
Chinese court.
 Denisse celebrates her most unexpected second place at the '82 World's in Lima with the winners from China. After the match, both teams elated by their victories, joined to make this one of the friendliest matches of all time. From left to right: Zhang Rongfang, Jiang Ying, Denisse, and Zheng Meizhu. In the image at the top of the page, Denisse is watching her opponents at the '91 World Cup in Japan. Nine years after her '82 victory, she was still pure heart. |
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| In Seoul Denisse
shared the outside position with Natalia Málaga and Cenaida Uribe. But
Man Bok Park (a.k.a, "Mambo") realised that although Natalia
had a much better defence and Cenaida was a better hitter, Denisse was
both so he used her for most of the matches. Her stellar performance
came in the semifinal against Japan, where she was virtually unstoppable
during the first two sets (before Japan woke up in the third and then
fell two points short of reaching the Olympic final—yes, quite the
nerve wrecker). In the final, Denisse was solid as always, but the way
the story unfolded she wasn't able to wear a gold medal around her neck.
I don’t recall if she cried on the awards stand, I doubt it, because
she always carried such a serious face… until the end of that decade
at least.
Someone once told me that Ian Fleming began to write about his most famous fictional character, James Bond, as a strong-hearted man who lost his cool control with age. At first he was bold, defiant, and arrogant in a sort of way, but as he grew older his once natural ability to withstand pressure situations began to wear him in. The opposite would seem to have made more sense: after so many tight spots in life, any further tension would have become almost second nature to deal with. But as with James Bond, so was the case with Denisse Fajardo. In the ’91 World Cup, where so much was at stake for Peru (olympic qualification), Denisse played spectacularly, but she began to give signs of over-emotional reactions to the game. Whereas before she would brush off an errant call by the referee, now she would actually gesture in disapproval and obvious indignation for being wronged. The cool-headed Denisse that Peruvians had become accustomed to see had turned into a really emotional player, which was good in that it really made her admirers appreciate the total extent to which she gave herself to the sport. One could see the pain she endured (as in a sprained ankle against the USA), or the way she taught the younger players to improve their game, or how she would warn upcoming plays across the net. In this way, Peruvians grew to admire her even more than when she used to be victorious but less expressive. It was so odd for the fans to see Denisse almost on the verge of tears… When the team couldn’t achieve its goal of olympic qualification, a fear ran through everyone’s mind that the mental strength that had carried the Peruvian team so far through the ‘80s was beginning to disappear. No one knew how much longer Gaby would remain with the team, but when Denisse retired after the ’91 World Cup, the team lost one of its four remaining pillars. The other two, Natalia and Rosa, continued beyond Denisse’s retirement in ‘91, beyond Gaby’s in ’93, and admirably still remain with the team, aiming at a respectable showing at the Summer Olympics in Sydney 2000. With Denisse, however, Peruvians were reminded that these players who represented their country weren't just athletes, but also evolving personalities who used this sport to take them, for better of for worse, through every possible emotion on the spectrum.
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