In these Olympic Games (Paris 2024) there are many Spanish athletes who are fighting for a medal and a place in the history of sport. Among all those who are representing Spanish sport, we wanted to highlight 5 athletes for their impressive career or their incredible achievements. Here is a small selection for you to continue learning about sport and improving your Spanish at the same time.
Ana Peleteiro Brión was born in Ribeira in 1995, a town in La Coruña on the west coast of Galicia. She is a Spanish athlete who has become popular for her results in the triple jump category. At the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games she won the bronze medal and showed her companionship and sportsmanship by celebrating the victory of the Venezuelan athlete who won the gold in the same category. Below you can watch the video of Peleteiro breaking the women’s national record and winning the bronze medal.
She won the gold medal at the European Athletics Championships (Rome 2024), which has made many people look forward to some very good results at these Olympic Games. Here is the moment when she won the gold medal with 14.85m in the fourth attempt during the final of the European Championships in Rome 2024.
“Mientras te guste lo que haces, hazlo. Y si lo haces, hazlo al 100% y disfrútalo”.
If you want to know more about this Galician athlete, you can watch the interview she did for the promotional youtube channel of Renfe, the Spanish train company, called Mujeres Viajeras.
Rayderley Zapata Santana is a Spanish athlete born in the Dominican Republic, but raised in Lanzarote (Canary Islands). With his first entry at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, he won the silver medal for his floor exercise in the individual category of artistic gymnastics. It was the first medal won by Spain in artistic gymnastics after 13 years without a medal in this sport.
This impressive gymnast is not only popular for his achievements and physical abilities, but also for his creativity in coming up with new moves. The current regulations have two jumps invented by him called Zapata I and Zapata II.
“Para mí el talento es algo que viene innato, (...) pero para explotar ese talento hay que trabajarlo”.
At these Paris 2024 Games, Ray is the Spanish representative to compete in the individual artistic gymnastics category and will also be part of the Spanish team in this sport. His friendship with fellow athlete Ana Peleteiro, who we have spoken about before, is a great support for him and was a further reason for celebration at Tokyo 2020 when they both won a medal on the same day.
If you want to know more about this athlete, here you can see an interview with him in the Spanish journal El País.
Cecilia Castro Burgos was born in San Agustín de Guadalix (Madrid) and started practising taekwondo at the age of 9, after trying out rhythmic gymnastics and discovering it was not for her. She began competing at international level in her teens and has already won numerous championships. Her awards include European Championship in 2022, third at the World Championships and a silver medal at the 2023 European Games in Krakow.
Here you can watch one of his fights at the World Taekwondo Championships in Baku 2022.
“Quiero que (en) cada combate que haga sienta que lo he dado todo y esté satisfecha del trabajo”.
If you want to know more about this sportswoman from Madrid, here is an interview she did for the sports journal Marca.
In addition to being popular for our football teams, Spanish tennis players have become very important in the history of sport. Names such as Rafael Nadal, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario or Carlos Moyá have appeared in international media during the last decades. However, the most popular tennis player of the moment is undoubtedly Carlos Alcaraz, who at only 21 years of age has managed to win the most important competitions in the world of tennis.
Among his many achievements there are two Wimbledon victories (2023 and 2024) and the Roland Garros in 2024. Here is a video of his Wimbledon victory in 2024.
“Puedes ser que esté cambiando un poco la manera de ver el tenis. Yo creo que he captado la atención de mucha gente que no veía el tenis, no por mi manera de jugar, sino por la manera de comportarme y de afrontar cada partido”.
If you want to know more about this Spanish tennis player, here you have the interview he did after winning for the second time at Wimbledon for the newspaper El País.
This young skateboarder is only 15 years old and has become one of the youngest athletes to represent Spain at the Olympic Games. Naia Laso was born in 2008 in Vizcaya, Basque Country. She combines her sporting career with her studies at high school. She qualified for a place at the Olympic Games with a broken collarbone after a training accident in preparation for the Olympic Qualification Series competition in Shanghai.
Despite being so young, she is the fourth best in the world in the women’s skateboarding rankings and is the winner of the World Skate Tour.
“Para mí sería un sueño ir a París 2024 ya que llevo mucho tiempo esforzándome para eso”.
If you want to get to know her a little bit better, here is the interview she did with skateboarder Danny León for the TV show La Resistencia.
If you need to improve your vocabulary to be able to follow all the events of Paris 2024, here is our post on sports vocabulary in Spanish.
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