Adri Ben’s spectacular fourth place in the 800m final is the best time ever at the National Center for Athletics for the Spanish delegation, and Mohamed Katir is Spain’s last hope of winning a medal at the National Center for Athletics.
Despite not being able to reach the last day of the competition, Spain takes the historic third place in the medal standings thanks to four gold medals in the march athletic (two for Álvaro Martín and two for María Pérez).
Walking, a specialty underestimated by Sebastian Coe, who didn’t have time to hold the ribbon on the arrival of Ethiopian Amane Berisho Shankule as the winner of the women’s marathon yesterday. In fact, this Saturday Canada finished second, with gold by Marco Arop (800) and Pierce LePage (decathlon) and silver (by weight) by Sarah Mitton.
While the most successful discipline in the history of Spanish athletics is hanging by a thread at the request of the International Olympic Committee with the connivance of World Athletics, the other truth is this: Spain has only had four medals in World Cups in the last 12 years outdoors, from Catalan Natalia Rodríguez’s bronze medal in the Daegu’11 1,500m.
These were accomplished by Ruth Beitia, head of the team delegation (silver in Moscow’13), Hispanic-Cuban Orlando Ortega (110 hurdles in Doha’19), Spanish-Moroccan Mohamed Katir (1,500 hurdles in Eugene’22) and Asier Martínez (110 hurdles in Eugene 22), the missing player of the current competition 22). The other two joined the march as double heroes along with Miguel Ángel López from Murcia in the 20 km (gold in Beijing ’15 and silver in Moscow ’13).
Looking at these numbers reveals two readings. On the one hand, the state of the walk does not allow rotation in the profile and anything without a solid defense of expertise is unthinkable without the ambiguity of the RFEA (Raúl Chapado was recently elected vice president of World Athletics). It’s like Norway doesn’t advocate cross-country skiing or biathlon. Or Canadian ice hockey. Or Italy fences it off.
The other is While Spain is in third place in the World Cup medal standings, it is not the second best country on the planet in athletics.. In fact, she slips into seventh place in the standings, not forgetting that the most and at least 36 of her 48 points came from walking (eight of every six plus four from fifth-placed Cristina Montesinos in the 35km).
Due to Katir’s failure to write his best poem against Ingebrigtsen in the 5,000 final and with Aregawi, Kejelcha and Gebrhiwet against the ‘Ethiopian army’, track secured sixth place to Fátima Diamé and Tessy Ebosele’s eighth length, Mario García Romo’s sixth (1,500) and the aforementioned Adri Ben’s (800) fourth. This is Spanish luggage on the Danube track.