The Spanish swimmer María de Valdés won the silver medal this Saturday in the 10 kilometer open water event at the World Championships, which are being held in Doha, a result that allows her to guarantee her presence at the Olympic Games in Paris 2024.
The woman from Malaga, silver in 5 kilometers at the 2022 European Championship, has completed a spectacular career in which she played for sprint gold with the great favorite, the Dutch Sharon van Rouwendaal, Olympic champion in Rio 2016 and runner-up in Tokyo 2020. Finally , Van Rouwendaal stopped the clock at 1:57:26.80, one tenth ahead of the Spanish (1:57:26.90), while the Portuguese Angelica André completed the World Cup podium (1:57:28.20).
De Valdés' silver is great news for Spanish swimming, which did not win a single medal in swimming at the 2022 and 2023 world championships; Although these 2024 events are characterized by the absence of the biggest names in the discipline. It is the first time that a Spaniard wins a silver medal in open water. Furthermore, it was not an expected metal, not even in the federation. The only precedent in the category was that of María Requena, bronze in the 2008 Open Water World Cup in Seville.
“I have been as constant as I could, I have worked a lot, with my ups and downs, but in the end all the work I have put in has paid off,” he declared at the end of the test, when he also thanked his coach for his support and dedicated the triumph for his father, who died three months ago. It has been a complicated race, due to the tide and the currents, but she has known how to “cope with it as best as possible”, as she herself has explained. “I have tried to be neck and neck with the best in every lap; I didn't want them to escape me. “I knew it was my chance.” Halfway through the race, she conceded, she faced some difficulty with her rivals, but she managed to recover in the final stretch. And what an ending. She stuck to Van Rouwendaal, her favorite, and didn't leave her alone until the last second. She thus gets rid of the thorn of the last Games, in Tokyo, for which she could not qualify.
The other Spaniard in this Saturday's event in Doha, Ángela Martínez from Elche, finished thirteenth (1:57:36.60) and also got her ticket for the Games. “It is something that the Spanish team deserved,” De Valdés concluded.
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