«Benfica’s swimmers excelled, their behavior was impeccable and we were fair winners, despite FC Porto, in the men’s sector, and Sporting, in the women’s sector, putting up a lot of fight and having very strong teams», declared Miguel Frischknecht after the eagles achieved the double in the 46th Club National, which took place at the Quarteira Swimming Pool.
Just like two years ago, Luz managed to win both the men’s title, becoming four-time champions, and the women’s title. Here recovering the title lost to Sporting.
If 2023/24 was the first occasion on which Benfica achieved such a feat – already done by FC Porto, Algés (1994/94) and Sporting (2021/22), now it joins the Dragons (1990/91, 1991/92) as the only team to… double the double since the competition was divided by sexes in 1986/87. The difference is that the blue and whites achieved it in consecutive seasons.
And, despite having already finished the first day ahead in both sexes, the biggest difficulty was in the women’s sector, in which the 286 points only gave them an advantage of 11 over Sporting (275), with FC Porto (250) holding the last step of the podium against Algés (242) and SC Braga (208). Gesloures (105), Estarreja (87) and Vilacondense (30) go down to Division II as last among the 16 teams.
«This year Sporting was the favorite to win and, as much as we could, we managed to form a team to fight and win. These two victories have a lot of value, as it is always very difficult to win in both genres. In the last three years we have won twice and, therefore, we are very proud of our swimmers who performed fabulously”, said Frischknecht who, to ensure the women’s triumph, had three French women and one Luxembourger. Option taken by many other teams and which has been growing.
In the champions, a particularity. Rita Frischknecht became the first to win the title with three different clubs, having already won at Algés (3) and Sporting (2).
In the men’s sector, Benfica (295) surpassed FC Porto by 22 points (273), accompanied on the podium by Algés (239), and followed by Sporting (195), Louletano (190) and V. Guimarães. Three historical records come down: Vilacondense (85), Académico Coimbra (68) and SFUAP (64).
In Nacional’s history, only Algés, twice (1994/95-1997/98 and 1999/00-2002/03), and Sporting (2011/12-2018/19) had managed to reach four times in men.
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