The building that housed the Spanish athletes in the Olympic Village in Paris displayed a unique instrument on its façade: a medal counter. It seemed like a luxury. It was a yoke. It worked like a clock that struck the fatal chimes, or like a clock that stops, most of the time. It must have weighed on the minds of the boys and girls who competed every day with the added anxiety of broadcasters that turned the tournament into a kind of Eurovision and institutions like the Spanish Olympic Committee, whose mathematical projections clashed with the reality of variables that the Olympic Committee had to deal with. big data does not know how to measure.
“Everyone was asking for a medal, a medal…”, said Felipe Perrone, captain of the water polo team that arrived at the Games as world and European champions, and was left in the grip of Croatia in the quarter-finals. Without a medal, and under the burden of a narrative that proclaimed that this generation was destined to win gold, now or never, given that Perrone was 38 years old. The pressure on the water polo players was reproduced on the canoeists and also on Carolina Marín, who internalized it with rage before breaking her knee on the threshold of the medal.
“We will surpass the 22 medals of Barcelona 92, I am convinced,” declared Alejandro Blanco, the president of the COE, before embarking on the Parisian crusade. The forecast turned against him. While in 1992 22 medals were won, 13 of them gold, in Paris they remained at 18 – one more than in Tokyo 2020 – and only five were gold; however, there are up to 17 fourth places. The golds were harvested in sailing, in 49r, a Spanish classic; in football, another Iberian monoculture; in water polo in the women’s category after a long-term project that produced silver in 2012 and 2021; and in athletics: in triple jump and race walking. Less than expected, especially if two factors that distort the statistics are considered. First, that in Barcelona 260 events were contested, 26% less than in Paris, where there were 329 golds up for grabs. Second, Russia, which won 71 medals in Tokyo, did not compete in Paris. Sanctioned for the invasion of Ukraine, around twenty Russian and Belarusian athletes did compete, without flag or anthem, they were the AIN, neutral international athletes.
Athletics made a stronger impact than any other federation. Jordan Díaz’s golds in the triple jump and the mixed relay race, together with the silver and bronze, respectively, of María Pérez and Álvaro Martín in the 20-kilometre race walk, consolidated the sport of tartan as the most solvent weapon of the Spanish delegation. After winning eight medals at the 2023 World Championships, canoeing was disappointing with two bronzes, perhaps due to the poor weather conditions, and inline swimming sank even further, a whirlwind of a federation in which swimmers or coaches appear every day complaining about the leaders. Except for boxing, which reached the unprecedented level of two medals, martial arts such as judo, taekwondo, wrestling and fencing, rich in pleasant surprises in other competitions, did not prosper in France.
As the head of the body that looks after the Spanish delegation in Paris, Alejandro Blanco acknowledged that his calculations were based on obvious results in World Championships and European Championships that were not reproduced at the Games, but only just. “We qualified 190 men and 193 women; we are the ninth country in the world with the most qualified,” he said. But the numbers did not add up. And the 22 in Barcelona were far behind.
Spain’s harvest contrasted with that of countries with which it compares itself in terms of demographics and economic resources, such as Holland, with a ratio of 14 golds out of 33 medals, or Italy with 11 golds and 39 medals; Hungary, which also has five golds and 18 medals, is far behind in terms of population and GDP. When asked yesterday, the COE president was blunt. He pointed out that Spain must redefine the role of the Government in sports planning. “The responsibility for high performance depends on the public money that the High Council of Sports gives to the federations,” he observed. “In most successful countries, the Government gives the money to the National Olympic Committee, which makes the distribution. This happens in Korea, Japan, Italy or the Netherlands. This system allows for long-term sports planning. What you need most to achieve results is continuous planning. Don’t think about the 2028 Games, but about the 2036 Games.”
“In 2016, as in 1986”
The president indicated that to achieve this it is necessary to reformulate the role of the CSD, a public body that since the last Games has changed its secretary with an average of one per year: “The problem is to define the sport model that we want and from there create a sports policy that is not subject to the variables of the Government or the variables of the governing party.”
“At the Rio Games,” explained Blanco, “the government reduced the public subsidy for the federations by 50% and we won 17 medals. And a secretary of state said: ‘We have reduced the money by 50% and we have kept the same number of medals, so money is not the most important thing’. The money in euros in 2016 was the same as that received in pesetas by Spanish sport in 1986. However much we increase it, we are still far behind other countries.”
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