University student: the fan who will carry the cream flag to the top of Aconcagua, at 6960.8 meters above sea level and -40 degrees in temperature

Take the U to the top. It is, of course, a golden dream. An ambitious task. A miracle that appears at night. That applies to all times. A 73-year-old fan, Ángel Villegas Soto, a sailor by profession, tells every Sunday at his house how he worked the late shift at the school where she studied to wait for the tube TV from the only business on the block to turn on. . It was his way of being alive. Sometimes he would climb on the shoulders of his older brother and up there, watching Chale and Cruzado offer his sacrifice, his magic on the field in the ’67 Libertadores, he felt on top. It was his way.

Another fan, Piero Alva, 44 years old, explained to me one afternoon at the Monumental, with a certainty more typical of an experienced doctor than a young soccer player, or more like Agatta Lys than Doctor Julio Segura, what his future was going to be like. in December. It was August, early days. It is Christian Cruz, journalist from El Comercio, witness. “I’m not going to have pubalgia surgery. I’ll just do treatment. Of course, on the day of the final with Alianza I am going to score a scissors goal in the South goal of Matute. You’re going to see, you’re going to see.” He was dying of laughter, even though he said it seriously. Well. That great goal elevated him to all the altars, he put the U at the top. And then, until today, Piero Alva continued his life with his feet always firmly planted on the ground. It was his way.

However, there is a fan who has taken this literally about taking Universitario until he touches the sky. Put the U at the summit of South America. Make this Centennial year even more unattainable. As I write, he leaves me a message on WhatsApp confirming the company’s first step: “Suitcase ready. We leave on the 4th.” A slight chill runs down my spine, as if someone had suddenly injected me with ice water, or had been stabbed; as if he were reading Numa Turcatti in any scene from The Solitude of Snow.

This is the Universitario fan Elías Calderón Llacsa, a young Peruvian theologian and mountaineer who lives in Montevideo and who, if his calculations do not fail, if the -40 degrees of temperature do not prevent him, will ascend to the summit on February 9 of the snow-capped Aconcagua in the Argentine Andes Mountains, the highest peak in America. The expedition will last about 7 days and you will be accompanied there by Víctor Rímac, the Peruvian who has conquered the Himalayas. And there, from that backpack that he just assured me has everything he needs, he will take out a U flag folded in four and wave it, at 6960 meters above sea level, as if he were this afternoon in 2013 in Huancayo when he turned around or in the popular north that sheltered him as a solitary adolescent.

Elías Calderón’s dream on video:

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Brief biography for the man who in his free time plans to conquer the mountain range: Elías Calderón Llacsa has been a theologian by profession and a missionary for a few years, when he understood that everything in life has a purpose and along the way only giving is useful. He does not keep his age under lock and key, he is almost forty: 38 years, 62 kg, Jesús María, Lima. When he was young he regularly attended any stadium where the U played. It was his joy, his poison, his passion, he cannot say in what dimensions: “Sometimes – he explains – I appeared by chance in the red chronicle of the newspapers and I even they took a photo. I was defending some children and they said I incited violence. You know that happens all the time,” recalls Calderón Llacsa, from Montevideo, where he resides today. He does not hide that part of history because he – he reflects – brought it all here. And since he dreams of being a writer, once, in his notebook heading to the Andes in Huaraz, he wrote down: “We are not owners of the path, nor of the destination. Neither love unites us, nor hate separates us. The feelings pass, as the night passes until reaching the summit at dawn. Everything may be missing, but never forget to carry your heart in your hand, to leave it where you dreamed of the night…”. Then he posted it on Twitter, that is, in X, one night in 2021 when the only roof that protected him was more than five thousand meters away.

DT learned of his story for the first time a few months after the post, in August 2022. Elías decided to take it to the top of the Yanapaccha technical mountain located in Huaraz. A snow-capped mountain that is located at 5,460 meters high, strategically located in the Cordillera Blanca between the Chopicalqui and Chacraraju mountains. A movie. From its summit you can see a 360° panoramic view of the surrounding peaks. No drone – no heart – can see clearer than his eyes.

After two days of expedition, avoiding glacial traffic and snow walls, sleeping in a companion camp, the Peruvian mountaineer reached the summit of the mountain at 8:35 am, with the sun in its highest splendor. At a time when many of us are just returning home, our gaze buried underground, Elías Calderón Llacsa took out his U shirt, marathon third alternate kit model from 2019, and kissed it.

Since he had energy left, he took several selfies.

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Now it is different, says Elías Calderón Llacsa. For weeks he has been completing rigorous training that includes, for example, increasing the consumption of polysaccharides (cereals and their derivatives, potatoes, legumes, and their derivatives) instead of abusing synthetic monosaccharides and disaccharides (a candy, a soda). Calderón Llacsa sends me some photos on WhatsApp and confirms what he has already said: he does not have a drop of fat. He is at his ideal weight and has his agenda ready: to climb Aconcagua, the highest mountain in America, where today it reaches -40 degrees at night. “I’m ready, I want to do it. I will do the expedition with a mountaineer friend and I hope to reach the summit on February 8 or 9. EmbajadUr and the USA Collective have supported me and that is always welcome, but this mission has nothing to do with anyone but me: we are in the Centennial year of the U and I want to take the club to the top, our team and our flag has to be above everyone, always. And it will be a metaphor: everything costs us so much but nothing as much as trying.”

-Don’t you think it’s impossible madness? I ask him, out of my absolute laziness and fear of freezing to death in the Andes.

-No, Miguel. On the contrary, it is an indescribable emotion. My heart races every time I think about the moment when I arrive and take out my U flag, my U, up in the sky.

Since that day, last Saturday night, I wait for the moment when the cell phone notifications ring and say Elías Calderón Llacsa writing…