Majida Maayouf and Tariku Novales led the Spanish marathoners in Paris

Spanish marathon record holders Majida Mayouf and Tariku Novales lead the six-member team away to attend their Olympic debut at the Paris Games and complete Ester Navarrete, Meritxell Soler, Ibrahim Chakir and Yago Rojoas announced this Tuesday by the Royal Spanish Athletics Federation.

None of the six athletes who ran in Sapporo at the Tokyo Olympics (Ayad Lamdassem, Dani Mateo, Javi Guerra and Marta Galimany, Elena Loyo and Laura Méndez) repeated three years later in Paris.

The two athletes guaranteed a place for Paris are Ibrahim Chakir, 29, and Esther Navarrete, 33.who, as Spanish champions in Seville, automatically had a ticket.

Chakir debuted at the distance in 2022 and, in his fourth marathon, Enrique Pascual’s student smashed his personal best to 2:07:48. In Paris he will represent Spain for the second summer in a rowafter his full international debut at the World Championships in Budapest with a twenty-third place.

In the men’s category there is also Tariku Novales, 26 years oldwho on December 3, 2023, in Valencia, recorded 2h05:48, a national record, and his training partner with Juan del Campo and Luis Miguel Martín Berlanas, Yago Rojo of Madrid, 28, who is in the same city, also In 2023, he stopped the clock at 2h07:47.

The Paris Olympic Games will be the first major global championship for Yago Rojo. International with Spain on four occasions, all of them at continental level: marathoner at the 2022 European Championships in Munich (15th), he has been a fixture since 2018 in the 10,000 European Cup. He made his marathon debut in 2020 and, year after year, in Valencia, he shaved a minute off his mark to go 2:07:47.

Ayad Lamdassem, who also has the lowest (2h07:39) and a better time than Yago Rojowas left out by doing so in Valencia in 2022 and it has not been revalidated in recent months.

Among the women, the presence of Majida Maayouf, of Moroccan, who since October 2, 2023 has a passport to compete in Spain, stands out. His best time was 2h21:01 in Valencia in 2022, when he still had no nationality, and last year, in the same city, he did 2h21:27.

Ester Navarrete made her marathon debut at the last Spanish Championship in Seville, where she took the victory in 2h24:40, the second best Spanish mark in history. Under the command of Manuel Vigo, his development was enormous and in his career he participated in several participations in 10,000 European Cups (2019, 2022 and 2023).

The third Spaniard at the Games was Meritxell Soler, Spanish runner-up in the marathon in Seville with the third best Spanish mark in history (2h24:57). The student of Joan Lleonart will have his third consecutive year defending the interests of Spain, after doing so in the 10,000m European Cup in 2022, in the 2023 World Championship marathon and in the next Olympic Games in 2024.