VOLUNTEERS have been rounded up by police to help in the search for Olympic medal-winning skier Blanca Fernández Ochoa, who has been missing since August 23 but whose disappearance was not reported until this weekend.
Initially, the retired Winter Olympian – widely held to be the best Spanish woman in skiing history and the first female Spaniard to win a medal – had told her daughter Olivia that she was going on a walking trip to northern Spain.
But suspicions were aroused when Olivia, who plays rugby for the Spanish national team, found her mother had not taken her mobile phone with her.
Between Blanca's going missing and her family's reporting the matter, eight days elapsed.
Four days after they last saw Blanca, Olivia uploaded a photograph of herself scuba-diving on Instagram, and her mother had 'liked' it, hinting that she was still in contact with the world as at August 27.
But Olivia later revealed she had 'liked' her own photo logged into her mother's Instagram account.
On Sunday, Blanca's black Mercedes A-Class was found in Cercedilla, in the northern mountains of the Greater Madrid region and 62 kilometres north of the city, in the Majavilán car park and near the start of the hikers' route.
Its windows were closed and the car had not suffered any apparent damage.
Witnesses claim it had not been parked there for more than 24 hours – or six days after she left home.
Around 250 professional rescue workers and three helicopters, plus 150 volunteers, are out looking for the skiing champion.
Police suspect Blanca's disappearance is voluntary, but her family does not agree and thinks she may have suffered an accident whilst hiking.
Diagnosed as bipolar when she was a child, and suffering 'ups and downs' all her life, Blanca was nevertheless 'in a good place' at the time she was last seen, according to her brother-in-law Adrián Federighi, so he does not believe she would have taken off on her own without letting someone know where she was.
Having retired from her own sport, Blanca was focusing all her energies in helping Olivia succeed in her rugby career.
Yet a friend of hers, Olympic Tae Kwondo medallist Coral Bistuer, said when she last spoke to Blanca in March the skier was 'going through a difficult patch' and was 'being attended to by various specialists'.
Coral says Blanca 'may have had another outbreak of her illness'.
Police discovered Blanca's bank account had not been touched since she was last seen, but her family says she does not possess debit or credit cards, so the lack of transactions with her account would not tell them much.
Authorities have spoken of Blanca's disappearance as 'high risk'.
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