Madrid, February 23 (EFE).- The classification of the soccer team for the Olympic Games for the first time in history is a milestone for Spanish women’s sport, which debuted in the great universal competition a century ago, also in Paris, with the tennis players Lilí Álvarez and Rosa Torras, and that he only had the great unfinished business of football.
After the Olympic places achieved last summer by the pentathlete Laura Heredia and the boxer Laura Fuertes, sports in which there had also been no Spanish female representation until now, football was the only sport with an Olympic tradition without precedent, with the exception of the ‘ additional sports’ on the program, surfing and climbing, which debuted in Tokyo 2020, and ‘breaking’, which will do so this year in Paris.
The classification of the soccer players is also fair, because until now the tournament that distributed the European Olympic places was the World Cup, which Spain won in 2023. But this time the criteria was changed and the status of qualifying tournament was granted to the new League of Nations, which forced the Spanish to repeat their good performance to secure the Games.
The qualification was tied this Friday with the victory over the Netherlands 3-0 in the semifinals of the Nations Cup.
Spain’s women’s debut on an Olympic stage could have occurred in 1920, when the tennis players ‘Panchita’ Subijana and Lily Rózpide were summoned for the Antwerp event. But none finally went to Belgium.
It was Lilí Álvarez and Rosa Torras who had the honor of being the first in 1924, and they took full advantage of it, because they participated in all three tournaments: singles, doubles and mixed doubles.
The best result was Álvarez’s quarterfinals in the individual draw.
There was no more Spanish female participation until the 1960 Rome Games, in which they debuted in gymnastics, swimming and fencing.
In Munich’72 the Spanish women made their debut in archery, in Montreal’76 in athletics (with the remembered Carmen Valero), in Los Angeles’84 in shooting, in Seoul’88 in tennis and sailing and in Barcelona’92 , helped by their role as hosts, in badminton, basketball, handball, cycling, fencing, hockey, judo, canoeing, table tennis and volleyball.
In equestrian and rowing they debuted in Atlanta ’96, in weightlifting, taekwondo and triathlon in Sydney 2000, in wrestling in Beijing 2008, in golf and rugby in Rio 2016 and in karate and skateboarding in Tokyo 2020.
With the gap in football covered, there are still options to improve Spanish female participation in new sports.
In climbing, the Spanish women’s options to go to Paris involve obtaining one of the ten tickets at stake in the combined and the five in speed in the Olympic qualifying series between March and June of this year.
The World Surfing Games that will be held next week on the beaches of Arecibo (Puerto Rico) are the event in which Spanish surfers will go all out for Paris. Nadia Erostarbe, Janire González and Lucía Machado participate. The seven best among those who are not already classified will obtain the pass for the Olympic competition, transferred to the idyllic Teahupoo, in Tahiti.
In Paris 2024, another discipline will debut, ‘breaking’, for both men and women.
Although it has already been eliminated from the program, softball is the other sport in which the Spanish women were never Olympic. This discipline was on the Games calendar in the 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2020 editions. EFE
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2024-02-23 22:23:00
#Football #closes #circle #Lili #Álvarez #Rosa #Torras #opened
