National Sports Awards for 2018 achievements presented this week

THIS year's prizegiving for the National Sports Awards took place in person, albeit socially-distanced, and based upon results for 2018 after delays caused by the pandemic which impeded their celebration last year.

King Felipe VI and his wife, Queen Letizia presented them this week, giving publicity to highly-successful sportsmen and sportswomen who should already be household names but who, in many cases are largely unknown outside their immediate field of activity.

Cyclist Alejandro Valverde and Winter Olympic bronze medal-winning snowboarder Regino Hernández got the King Felipe Prize for Best Spanish Sportsman of 2018, and 30-year-old boxer Joana Pastrana took the Queen Letizia Prize for Best Spanish Sportswoman of 2018.

Joana, from Madrid, only turned professional five years ago, but is the first Spanish female in history to win the European Featherweight Championship.

Ana Carrasco, 23, the fastest woman on two wheels – who was riding at championship level in Moto3 aged 16 – has always been up against men, since there is no speed category in motorcycle racing for females; but she still managed to become Supersport 300 world champion in September 2018, just a year after becoming the first woman ever to win a race at that level.

The biker from Cehegín (Murcia) took the King Juan Carlos I Prize for Best New Sportsperson of 2018.

Awards were also given to women for raising awareness of their sport for females and helping promote sports and physical activity in general – winners were the Spanish female under-17s football team as a whole, chess star Sabrina Vega Gutiérrez, and athlete and footballer Salma Paralluelo.

Retired basketball star Juan Carlos Navarro got the Francisco Fernández Ochoa Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and the Ibero-American Community Trophy went to triple-hurdle indoor women's world champion of 2018, Venezuela's Yulimar Rojas.

Institutions and organisations that won National Sports Awards were the Real Madrid University College-European University and the Ecomar Foundation who got the Ex-Aequo Stadium Cup; Don Benito town council, which won the High Council for Sports (CSD) Prize; Jaén University, which picked up the Joaquín Blume Trophy; the High Council of Chartered Colleges of Physical Education Graduates which earned the National Arts and Applied Sports Sciences Prize; and the Sanitas Foundation, which won the Infanta Sofía Prize.