RAGA: PROFILE OF A CHALLENGER José Manuel Raga is a man who, with discipline and conviction, can turn his dreams and aspirations into challenges for what he thinks is fair. He considers sports a passion and feels driven by his adventurous spirit and his restless search for balance between his life and nature. Raga, 34, has been able to accomplish through a rigorous agenda his commitments in sports, at work and in his personal life. His professional training has always been determined by perseverance and organization. In 1992 he obtained an associate degree in informatics, at the IUT “Dr. Federico Rivero Palacio”, and later, in 2001 became a bachelor in Business Administration at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. Nowadays he works as the Accounting Manager of the Aggregates & Concrete Division of Lafarge-Venezuela, a company that has supported some of his projects. Although he received in schools a preparation for life, it has been 18 years of dedication and effort what has made of him a complete athlete. He began on the soccer field at San Agustín School in El Paraíso, where he made his elementary and high school and for four years he displayed a remarkable participation in that institution’s soccer team. His following steps were in 1988 in Kung-Fu and Tae Kwon Do, directed in this martial art by Juan Carlos Navia, who taught him the most important bequest: self-control, discipline and perseverance. He won a bronze medal in Tae Kwon Do in the Olympic combat category of the East Coast Championship with green belt, held in New Jersey, USA. As a complement of his activities and for doing something different, Raga includes swimming in his training routine, defining with it a life style that very few people are able to maintain as time passes. In 1989 he became part of the water polo team of the Complejo Deportivo Naciones Unidas, in which he refined his ability to apply strategies for working in group. He played there for two years, and later became part of the team “Las Focas” (The Seals) in the Complejo Deportivo Teo Capriles. With perseverance he perfectionated his stroke and style in three years. He became a swimmer of the master category team “Los Vikingos” (The Vikings) in Complejo Deportivo Parque Miranda in 1996. Orinoco and Caroní rivers represented his first feat in 1998. Two years later he took part again in that crossing, which gathers hundreds of athletes of this discipline every year. Reaching the other shore by swimming against the current for hours became at the beginning an objective, later an achievement. The strength of his goals gave him the driving force to pursue more and more ambitious feats. When the space in swimming pools and rivers seemed too short for him, he decided to conquer the open sea. As a result, he develops some projects that demand additional training: adapting his mind and body to uncertain conditions in which he may flag or doubt. In order to have a stronger mind and body, he practices spinning, yoga, stretching and breathing, and gets massages and physiotherapy. After such hard training, Raga assumed the risks of his first project: to cross swimming the stretch Araya-Margarita. He achieved it successfully on August 31st, 2002. With the experience that he got in this first open water crossing, he decided to go further and “join” with his strong stroke Venezuela and Trinidad. He became the first swimmer to complete this feat on September 12th, 2003. Between projects he spends time with his family, his friends, physical training, surfing and windsurfing. He is definitely part of the sea.