At the Paris Paralympic Games, Zaragoza-born Teresa Perales achieved her goal of winning a medal in the 50m backstroke, S2 class for physically disabled people, to equal the 28 medals of American Michael Phelps, who won that number of medals in four editions of the Olympics. Perales, 48, faced the 50m backstroke with optimism, one of her favourite events and with which she has a good relationship after winning gold in Rio 2016, silver in Beijing 2008 and Tokyo 2020 and bronze in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004. On this occasion, the Aragonese swimmer reached the final after recording 1:12.79, the third best time in her series and the sixth overall of the eight qualified for the medal fight.
In the final, with cries of ‘Teresa, Teresa’, with Queen Letizia in the stands, Teresa did not get off to a bad start. Swimming with her right hand, she was always alternating between third and fourth position, but at the key moment, in the last few metres, she was able to keep up the pace and touched the wall in a time of 1:10.95, just two hundredths less than the Italian Angela Procida (1:10.97).
The victory went to China’s Pin Xiu Yip with 1:05.99 and the silver to Mexico’s Haidee Viviana Aceves with 1:08.96.
Teresa Perales is competing in Paris with only one arm. At the last Paralympic Games, Tokyo 2020, she competed with a dislocation in her left shoulder. She still managed to get on the podium to collect a silver in the 50m backstroke S5, her usual competition category since Sydney 2000. In the following months she underwent surgery and began swimming with only one arm, the right one. She was reclassified to the S2 class for this new way of swimming, but in February of this year, at the World Series in Melbourne (Australia), she had to be tested again.
The judges decided that she would move up to the S3 category, something that the swimmer, the Spanish Paralympic Committee and the Spanish Federation of Sports for People with Physical Disabilities, to which she depends, were not happy with. The complaints caused the Aragonese swimmer to undergo a new classification process in April in Funchal, the venue for the European Championships, with the aim of having her disability reviewed again. The objective was to return to the S2 class and thus compete on equal terms with swimmers who do it in similar conditions to hers. She achieved this.
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