Spain is 100 days away from the Olympic dreams of Paris, where at an individual or collective level there are plenty of arguments to put in a good performance in an event held between July 26 and August 11, which will provide national athletes with a new opportunity to break barriers and that will most certainly be written with a woman's name, based on what has been seen in Tokyo, Rio or London.
With more than fifty medal options in Spanish sport, the realistic objective is once again to surpass the record established in Barcelona'92, with 22 medals. With the event getting closer and closer, up to 277 Spanish athletes are already classified and ready to compete in Paris according to the latest official data from the Spanish Olympic Committee, while some teams and athletes continue fighting for the ticket. On the list of candidates to make the country shine are athletes who are making their debut and others who already know what it means to win a medal.
A study conducted by the consulting, data and analysis firm Nielsen determines that Spain would be two metals away from the historic Catalan Olympic event, and would obtain the second best medal tally in its history, surpassing the number of metals achieved in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, with 17 medals. The figures are updated monthly, according to information on their website. 20 medals would be achieved (5 gold, 5 silver and 10 bronze) according to the prediction made with a statistical model that is based on the results obtained from world championships, European championships and the evolution of world rankings of all participating sports. The United States leads this virtual list, followed by China, Great Britain, Japan and France. Spain would be in twelfth position, behind Canada.
In athletics there are several options in Spain, and race walking will be one of the great assets. There are Álvaro Martín and María Perez, two-time world champions in 20 and 35 kilometers. In 20 km and the new mixed relay, the walker from Extremadura and the Granada will be the top candidates after the milestone achieved at the World Championships in Budapest. Both finished fourth in the Tokyo Games and will arrive at the Paris Games as main favorites and rivals to beat. The same happens with Carolina Marín, Olympic badminton champion in Rio 2016 and world runner-up in 2023 after three universal titles. The Huelva native, after two serious knee injuries, recently won All England – the most prestigious tournament in world badminton – and this weekend won her seventh European champion title, so her great challenge is gold.
Among the metals that are contemplated there are several collective sports. Two in football, with Spain as current men's Olympic runner-up and women's world champion, a team led by Montse Tomé that also occupies first place in the FIFA ranking. In water polo there are also two options, with the men's team being the current European champion and runner-up in the women's team. In contact sports, boxing with Martín Molina and Emmanuel Reyes-Pla, judo with Fran Garrigós and taekwondo with Adrián Vicente and the current Olympic runner-up Adriana Cerezo are among the expected medalists.
In canoeing Saúl Craviotto, the most successful Spaniard in the Games with five medals (two golds, two silvers and a bronze) along with David Cal, aspires to another metal in the K4-500, in addition to Antía Jácome in the C1-200, as world runner-up last August and in the C2-500 with María Corbera, with whom she also won universal silver. For Craviotto it will be his fifth Olympic participation and his teammates in the K4-500 who were proclaimed Olympic runner-up in Tokyo in 2021 and world champion in 2022 must be Marcus Cooper, Carlos Arévalo and Rodrigo Germade. In tennis, Carlos Alcaraz is one of the big favorites to get on the podium, as well as Jon Rahm in golf. Fátima Gálvez, Olympic champion in shooting along with Alberto Fernández, is another of the strong candidates proposed by Nielsen.
Sailing, the sport that has given Spain the most Olympic medals throughout history (13 gold, five silver and five bronze), also has great options. Among the boats classified for Paris are the 49er of Diego Botín and Florian Trittel (bronze in August at the World Cup in The Hague) and the mixed 470 of Jordi Xammar and Nora Brugman (silver at the last World Cup). In addition to .
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