Echegoyen and Cooper, standard bearers on the Seine

This time there was no stadium or tartan to pass through, but there was a flag represented, on a boat full of dreams across the Seine River in a ceremony unprecedented in the Olympic world. Támara Echegoyen and Marcus Cooper will be the standard bearers of the Spanish delegation at the Paris Games this Friday. Both deserve it and thus crown exemplary races in Spanish Olympic sport, although they know very well that the Olympic calendar has given them a hand, especially Echegoyen.

Since the IOC invited national committees to appoint their flag bearers in 2020, the COE chose to reward success when selecting its representatives. Maialen Chourraut, who had missed the podium in the last three Games, was the first to receive that honor in Paris, but he declined because he had to compete in whitewater canoeing the next morning, and a parade a few hours earlier made it difficult. all and may affect its performance.

Maialen wasn’t there, but Támara and Marcus were choices of obvious justice. Cooper is the first bearer of the Spanish flag to be born outside the country: to an English father and a German mother, he was born in Oxford, but has lived in Mallorca since he was a year old. He has Olympic gold and silver. Less than Craviotto and Nadal, both team members in Paris, but already the same standard bearer: Saúl in Tokyo and Rafa in Rio.

29 years old, Marcus Cooper was just 21 when he won Olympic gold at the Rio Games in a thrilling K1 1000 final where he made an incredible comeback in the final third of the event. Five years later, in Tokyo, came the second podium, a silver in the K4 500 that was two tenths short of gold. With several world medals under his belt, Marcus was tempted by Great Britain to compete under their flag, but he always made it clear that he wanted to do it for Spain, the country where he has always lived. In Paris he has the option of two more medals within the powerful canoeing team: again the K4 500 and the K2 500.

Támara Echegoyen, a 40-year-old from Orens, is competing in her fourth Games. The sailor will do so in the 49er FX class with Paula Barceló, after being fourth in the last two Games and entering the history of Spanish sport in his first Olympic experience, London 2012, where he won gold in the Elliott class with Angela Pumariega and Sofia Toro. After that victory he had to change the Olympic class and twice, in Rio and Tokyo, he was left in the most bitter place, fourth. He is considered one of the most versatile Spanish sailors, he has been world champion five times and participated in two world tours. Paris 2024 and more specifically Marseille, the sailing headquarters, will see her compete again in the 49er FX with Paula Barceló. He suggests that this is his last Games and the loss of two medals in the last two Games is “painful”, but the sadness has passed and he will go to Marseille for everything, “very concentrated in the last few days I almost didn’t think about being a standard bearer.”

The Galician and the Balearic will continue the tradition of Spanish flag bearers, a list that perfectly sums up the history of Spanish Olympic sport. Since the beginning of the century, Manel Estiarte (2000), Isabel Fernández (2004), David Cal (2008), Pau Gasol (2012), Rafa Nadal (2016), Saúl Craviotto and Mireia Belmonte (2020).