Spain broke the good Olympic record from Barcelona’92 in Paris

With 18 metals (5 gold) the winner Paris’2024, Barcelona’92 will continue for at least four years at best Games of Olympic history Spainannounced at home by winning 22 medals, 13 of which were gold, a dazzling figure that even now seems inaccessible in the short term and catapulted the host country to 6th place in the final medal table.

With almost 500 athletes qualified for Paris and great results in the last Olympic cycle, that bar of 22 medals appeared as a possible goal, but the competition dictated his sentence, the team finally fell to expectations and four podium finishes (18) of his record.

Despite these shadows, on the contrary, there are some Olympic lights that perhaps remained in the background, but that endorsed one of the great strengths of Spain, team sports, breaking their Olympic record of Barcelona’92 .

With the copper of ‘Hispanics’ of handball in closing, Spain won four medals at the same Games for the first time in its history and, with two gold medals, it also surpassed the amount of metals achieved in 1992.

Spain has been on the podium three times in team sports in as many as five different Games (Barcelona’92, Atlanta’96, Beijing’2008, London’2012, Tokyo’2021)but I have not overcome this obstacle until Paris’2024: two gold (men’s soccer, women’s water polo), one silver (women’s 3×3 basketball) and one bronze (men’s handball) signed the new peak that the two gold (men’s soccer, women’s field hockey) and the silver (men’s water polo) ) represented until now ) from Home Games.

The soccer team in Paris ended 28 years without Olympic gold for Spain in team sports, a drought that lasted since men’s water polo’s victory in Atlanta Games’96. A streak of 10 consecutive finals losses began, but the two goals of Sergio Camello in extra time against France (3-5) ended the curse on Friday and, the next day, the water polo players of Miki Oca They joined the celebration of gold, dominated Australia (9-11).

While it finished 15th in the overall medal table, Spain rose to 4th place in the team sports medal table, surpassed only by USA (3 gold and 8 total metals), Netherlands (3 and 4) and France (2 and 7). In summary, Spain was 3rd in the number of medals (4), finals (3) and semifinals (6), behind only the American and French teams. In the medals and finals, the Spanish shared third place with the Dutch and Germans.

Women’s football and men’s field hockey also fought for medals, but fell in both the semifinals and the match for bronze and, therefore, were left on the medal table.

As many as 22 countries won at least one medal in the eight Olympic team sports in Paris, but only nine made it back to the podium, it was noted. USA (8), France (7), Netherlands (4), Spain (4) and Germany (4) in addition to Denmark, Serbia, Australia and Brazilall have two metals.

The Netherlands have been the most effective, with three golds in the three finals played, and France completed a superb Games in front of its home crowd by reaching seven finals, almost half of the 16 on the Olympic programme. Of course, there he was weaker, and finished with only two golds, like Spain, and five silvers.

In this scenario, the poor performance of China. In another display of its current power, the Asian ‘giant’ managed to equal the 40 gold medals of the United States in the final medal table, which finished first with more silver than the Asians (44 to 27).

However, the Chinese still did not stand out in team sports and their contribution was testimonial, a single medal among the 91 of their delegation and, moreover, completely unexpected: silver in women’s field hockey.