Let the Women’s Games Begin

I will watch from home. That is the answer to the question I have been asked countless times over the last few months. Are you going to Paris? No, I will watch the Olympic Games, for the first time in forty years, from home.

I have enjoyed them, I have lived them, both in summer and winter, since I first attended an edition: they were Seoul 88 and, since then, I have lived them all from the inside. It is exciting for all those who live sport with the intensity with which I live them.

And I’m going to pay special attention to women. For the first time, the Spanish Olympic team is made up of more women than men, and it’s not the only country where this is happening. Tokyo 2020 should have been the edition with equal participation, but the pandemic ruined it, like so many other things, and that circumstance didn’t happen, but in Paris 2024 it does.

The day before the opening ceremony, the women’s football team will make its debut in an Olympic event for the first time in history, and it will do so with the best team against Japan. I’ll be watching.

I want to follow Teresa Portela, an Olympic runner-up in Tokyo who will compete in her seventh Olympic Games. Only Jesús García Bragado has participated in more than Teresa.

I will be keeping an eye on the Spanish teams that, except for rugby and volleyball, have qualified in all possible disciplines: basketball, handball, field hockey, 3×3 basketball, water polo and football.

On the 28th I want to see Simone Biles again at the Olympics. How much this woman has done for mental health in athletes! She deserves the great success she couldn’t achieve in Tokyo because she prioritized her well-being over Olympic glory.

I want to see Carolina Marín fight for medals: her knees and her determination are holding up for that purpose. I won’t miss Ana Peleteiro’s triple jumps or the downhills of another veteran, Maialen Chourraut, who is going for her fifth Games and in search of her fourth medal.

Nor the shooter Fátima Gálvez, Olympic champion in Tokyo, who also knows what the Olympic event is like. In sailing I also expect good performances from Támara Echegoyen, Gisela Pulido, Antía Jacome and María Corbera in C2, from the golfers Azahara and Carlota, from Belén Toimil in shot put, from the artistic gymnasts, especially Anita Pérez, who suffered damage to her ankles due to the snowfall Filomena and has taken some time to recover from.

From Polina Berezina of rhythmic gymnastics, who has finally achieved her Olympic dream because she was just outside the Olympics in Tokyo. And from Alba Bautista, a fighter. And from the team, carefully managed by the coach, Alejandra Quereda, who already knows what an Olympic silver medal is because she brought one back from Rio and wants to take the team she now coaches to the podium. The prospects are good.

And I expect a lot from the three race walkers, especially Maria Perez, who will compete on the 1st, and also, in athletics, from Fatima Diame in the long jump. And I will be keeping a close eye on the very young Adriana Cerezo, who caused a stir three years ago by winning Olympic silver in taekwondo and is still one of the favourites. And another of the many foreign legends will be the American basketball player Diana Taurasi, who at 42 years old will compete in her sixth Games and is seeking her sixth Olympic gold. No one has been able to beat the US basketball team so far with the player in their ranks.

I would love to see the Spanish teams competing in the second week because that means they have passed the group stage and are in the final rounds and who knows, maybe even competing in the semi-finals and final, that is, the medals.

And from the water, the swimmers, especially artistic swimming and María de Valdés in open water.

In short, I will not have enough time to follow everything I want and I will enjoy the Olympic Games as if I were in Paris. The distance from the Olympic Games does not mean melancholy. I still think that the Olympic Games are the best professional experience I have ever had, from which I have learned so much personally and professionally and which has given me so much that is why I wear the Olympic rings around my neck.

Let’s get comfortable and let the party begin!

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