SPANISH national low-cost airline Vueling has announced numerous extra flights this summer, increasing frequency and destination choice for 2024.
Paralympians return home: Who they are, their medals, their stories
11/09/2021
MOST of Spain's Paralympic competitors arrived home this week after the long flight from the Japanese capital, many to a hero's welcome, although silver medallist Teresa Perales is still in hospital in Tokyo after suffering from an anxiety attack.
She is expected to be home 'in the next few days', according to the Spanish Paralympic Committee (CPE), when she will be able to take a proper break and wind down from the frenetic, high-intensity, euphoria-filled maelstrom that is the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the chance to stand tall on the podium and know you have made your country proud of you.
Teresa, 45, a journalist, author and former politician, became paralysed from the waist down aged 19 as a result of neuropathy, but has gone on to win 27 Paralympic medals in swimming – including her silver in the 50-metres backstroke in Tokyo.
Héctor Cabrera, 27, from Oliva (Valencia province) was greeted at Manises airport on Wednesday by a huge team of friends, family, colleagues and trainers, all desperate to see his bronze – his first Paralympic medal, from his second Games, in javelin-throw.
The up-and-coming star and twice-European champion suffers from the hereditary Stargardt Disease, which causes progressive vision impairment.
Typically, Spain's Paralympic medal haul is greater than its 'mainstream' Olympic collection, and Tokyo 2020 was no exception – with 36 overall, beating the Rio 2016 result of 31, including nine golds, plus 131 diplomas for fourth to eighth place, putting Spain 15th overall – as opposed to 22nd in the Olympics, with 17 medals, of which three were gold.
Spain's best results were mostly in athletics, swimming and cycling – and in all three together, with a handful of triathlon medals – plus one-off podium places for judo, target-shooting and table tennis.
And although every medal in every Games has a story behind it, a struggle, a passion, a rare talent, crippling self-doubt, punishing work ethic, a lone fight or a team of family and friends who sacrificed everything to make it happen, or a day-job to pay the bills whilst taking unpaid time off to compete, these stories are arguably more likely to be about triumph over troubles when the medals in question decorate Paralympic competitors. Especially those whose disabilities were acquired in later life rather than being present at birth, as they would have had to adapt emotionally as well as physically, not just to sport, but to all other aspects of life.
The back-stories behind Spain's successful Paralympians are, naturally, enormously diverse.
Our golden girls and guys in athletics
They include runner Adiaratou Iglesias, 22, from Mali, who was forced to flee her community aged 11 due to dangerous superstitions about albinos, making the journey to Logroño (La Rioja) where her brother and his wife lived. A reportedly dysfunctional family environment meant she ended up in a children's care home before being adopted by a Spanish family in Lugo, Galicia.
Being albino means she only has 10% vision, but special glasses increase this to 20%, which has not stopped her holding the national 100-metres record (12.42 seconds) or winning the Tokyo gold in this category and the silver in the 400 metres.
Gerard Descarrega, 27, won the 400-metres gold in Rio and again in Tokyo, alongside his guide Guillermo Rojo. His parents were told when he was four that he would eventually go blind due to a pigmentary retinosis; by 13, he had to use a giant magnifying glass, and by 16, lost his sight completely. His decision to take up running sparked fear and over-protection among his family, but they need not have worried.
“This is the best job in the world,” he told national daily newspaper La Vanguardia in 2019.
Another gold for Spain in athletics went to Yassine Ouhdadi el-Ataby, 27, who arrived in the country from his native Morocco aged six and who was born with cataracts. Surgery would be too high-risk and has been ruled out, but as Yassine left school at 15 'to help in the house', saying he 'had trouble studying' - “I found it hard to read the papers,” he says – he has 'got used to' not being able to see very well and is 'able to lead a normal life'.
Joining Héctor Cabrera at Valencia airport this Wednesday was his fellow shot-put competitor Kim López, who smashed the world record when he netted his gold with a 17.02-metre throw.
Kim, 32, is partially-sighted, like Héctor, who gained a seventh-place diploma in the same discipline with a throw of 13.03 metres.
The best on wheels
Alfonso Cabello, 27, from La Rambla (Córdoba province) was once again unstoppable – after his track-cycling individual gold and team seventh-place diploma in London 2012, team and individual bronze in Rio 2016, he scooped up the gold again in Tokyo in the one-kilometre against-the-clock track race, and the bronze in the team track speed trial with Pablo Jaramillo and Ricardo Ten.
Alfonso was born with the lower half of his left arm missing, so has never had to 'adapt' to living a normal life – for him, this already is normal; for his team mate Pablo, however, it was a struggle: The 44-year-old, who lives in Almería, was in a serious car crash aged 24, which caused major and irreversible damage to his left arm. Cycling, he says, was his therapy, helping him recover physically and face up to the emotional trauma of learning to live with a permanent disability.
And the other third of the team, Ricardo Ten, had even more adjusting to do, mentally and physically: At age eight, the Valencia-born swimmer and cyclist survived being electrocuted, but lost a leg and the majority of both arms, one just above the elbow and the other just below.
Now 46, he has quite a collection of medals, although up to and including London 2012, these were all for swimming: A silver and bronze in Atlanta 1996, two golds in Sydney 2000, a gold and a bronze in Peking 2008 and a bronze in the British capital.
Spain's other gold medallist in cycling, Sergio Garrote, 42, was another who had an emotional battle on his hands when he became disabled as an adult, but in the case of the road-race champion from Catalunya, his life actually improved as a result: It took him from being a 25-year-old building-site worker to top international biker and with a professional career in criminology and medicine.
A devastating accident on the job left him with permanent damage to his spine and wheelchair-bound, and as he railed against the frustration and injustice, Sergio's friends and family were a massive source of support, helping him see what he could still do, not what he couldn't.
Sergio went back to university, and after finishing his degree, discovered the handbike.
A bronze in the H1-2 road cycling trial and a gold in the H2 against-the-clock trial are the latest of his Paralympic achievements.
Susana Rodríguez Gacio, 33, from Vigo (Galicia), is a doctor and physiotherapist – being albino, which meant she was born with just 5% vision in one eye and 8% in the other, did not stand in the way of her medical degree studies or hospital training – and she has been involved in sports through the National Organisation for Blind Spaniards (ONCE), a disabled foundation which runs a daily lottery, since earliest childhood.
A year after qualifying as a doctor, she took part in the triathlon at her first Paralympics, Rio 2016, gaining a fifth-place diploma.
Since 2012, she has been world champion three times, reserve champion twice and bronze medallist twice, European champion, reserve champion and bronze medallist on two occasions each, and she has finally netted the missing piece for her awards display: A gold in Tokyo 2020.
Going swimmingly
Michelle Alonso is just 27, but has won the Paralympic gold in the 100-metres breaststroke at the last three consecutive Games, earning her the honour of being flag-bearer for Spain in Tokyo, a personal congratulations from the Canary Island regional president Ángel Víctor Torres, who called her 'an immense source of pride' for her home territory, and will probably receive the Tenerife Gold Medal now that the island council or Cabildo president, Pedro Martín, has put her name forward.
She is the first female to carry the Spanish flag at a Paralympic Games, a prestige she shared this time with Ricardo Ten.
Michelle has learning difficulties, did not start to speak until she was five, but it was physical problems – with her back – which led her to take up swimming when she was seven.
Her intellectual disability means she has often felt ostracised, and her trainer recommended she listen to music with her headphones on before starting a race, so she did not have to feel she was 'being laughed at'.
Michelle has always had the last laugh, though: She has won high-profile swimming competitions against girls and women her age with no disabilities.
Fellow Paralympic swimmer Marta Fernández Infante, also 27, took home an amazing three medals from Tokyo, one in each colour, for 50-metre races – a gold in breaststroke, silver in butterfly and bronze in freestyle.
Born in Burgos, a graduate in business and management, Marta, who has cerebral palsy, is a State civil servant in the neighbouring province of Valladolid.
Silver fish
Barcelona-born swimmer Nuria Marqués is only 22, but has already been world champion four times, reserve champion three times – the first being when she was only 16 – and bronze medallist five times, as well as taking home a gold in 400-metres freestyle and a silver in 100-metres backstroke from Rio 2016.
This time around, she repeated her performance in the 100-metres backstroke, coming second, and was third in the 200-metres medley, returning with a silver and a bronze.
“I was born with a physical disability in my left leg, but this hasn't stopped me competing or leading a normal life,” says Nuria.
“When I was nine months old, my parents took me to the local pool for a babies' swimming course...at age 11, I first competed in adapted swimming, and since age 13, I've been on the Spanish team.”
Spain gained nine silvers for swimming, including the two won by Antoni Ponce, 34, a physiotherapist from Vilafranca del Penedès. Born with bilateral degenerative spastic paraplegia, which mostly affects his legs and abdomen and is actually aggravated by his sport – although he considers the benefits outweigh the drawbacks – Antoni drives to Barcelona every morning to train before work.
Sarai Gascón, 28, from Tarrasa (Barcelona province), was born with the lower half of her left arm missing, but has been a consistent Paralympic medallist with a silver in Peking 2008, a bronze and a silver in London 2012, three silvers in Rio 2016, and a silver in the 100-metres freestyle and bronze in the 100-metres butterfly in Tokyo 2020.
Miguel Luque, 44, from Granollers, is another swimmer who has taken at least one medal home from every Games: Golds at Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, where he also gained a bronze; a bronze from Peking 2008; silvers from London 2012 and Rio 2016, and now a silver in Tokyo.
This, in the 50-metres breaststroke, was Spain's first in the Tokyo Paralympics, and in a sport which Miguel took up purely for therapeutic reasons and which he practises for four hours a day – he was born with congenital multiple arthrogriposis, which causes mass muscle contractions all over the body and has no cure, meaning he spends a lot of time in a wheelchair when he is not in the water or on his adapted bike.
Óscar Salguero, 23, from Sabadell, was hoping to match his incredible Paralympic début – a gold in the 100-metres breaststroke in Rio – but can still be extremely proud of the silver he won in the same class in Tokyo, especially given his very young age.
He was born with the lower half of his right arm missing, but went on to become world champion in 2017 and European champion in 2018 – somehow managing to fit in his punishing swimming training schedule with his full-time medical degree studies at Barcelona Autonomous University.
A year younger, Íñigo Llopis Sanz, from San Sebastián, has earned his first-ever Paralympic medal with a silver in the 100-metres backstroke after taking up swimming merely to help with a severe and permanent thigh injury he suffered as a child whilst playing football; before then, he played basketball and handball, but his real successes have been in the water, shattering the 200-metres world record in January 2020 and the national 100-metres backstroke record at around the same time, earning him his ticket to Tokyo.
More silvers: Athletics, triathlon and judo
Adiaratou is one of three women to earn silver medals for Spain in athletics, along with Míriam Martínez and Sara Martínez. No relation to each other – Míriam, 30, with a silver in shot-put, was born in Ibi (Alicante province) and Sara, 31, second in the long-jump, is from Madrid – they both did their country proud.
Míriam, a construction engineer, only took up shot-put two or three years ago, and came second with a 9.62-metre throw – before then, her favourite sport was indoor football, which she competed in semi-professionally along with her full-time career.
But a brain haemorrhage age 27, caused by a neurodegenerative autoimmune disease, left her with permanent spasms and lack of coordination, forcing her to learn to walk again; shot-put became her 'personal refuge'.
To go from being unable to walk due to a massive bleed to the brain, to winning a Paralympic silver, in less than three years, tells us everything we need to know about Míriam's level of determination and conscientiousness.
Sara, a full-time instructor at Spain's National Sports Council (CSD), took up athletics aged eight because she was 'bored rigid with swimming' as her instructor 'completely ignored her' – and she has words for anyone who thinks it is 'easier' to win medals at the Paralympics because there are so many more categories.
“I'd like to see even an able-bodied person train the way we do,” says Sara, who is partially-sighted.
“And I have better vision even than many of the others in my category.”
The other athletics silver medallist for Spain is Iván José Cano, 26, a telecommunications engineering graduate who has nearly finished a degree in physics at Alicante University, European champion in 2016 and reserve world champion in 2015, both in long-jump. He was born with impaired eyesight due to being albino, and says 'the horizon is not what you can see, but what you imagine it to be'. Iván also has a black belt in Taekwondo.
Triathlete Héctor Catalá, 33, from Serra near Valencia, who has come home with a silver medal, was born with the rare condition known as 'Best Disease' and which progressively reduces eyesight. Héctor currently has 10% vision, and this was enough for him to be written off by professionals for any kind of physical activity: A doctor specialising in sports famously stated he would never be capable of endurance-based competition, and as Héctor had never really achieved any results or shown great performance in swimming, he could have decided to give up.
Obviously he didn't – as is often the case, all this made him more determined than ever, and he began competing in paratriathlon in 2014. He has since turned professional, and is ranked among the top triathletes on earth; the name of his rare visual condition seems to be literal in Héctor's case, given that he is widely considered to be among the Best.
Sergio Ibáñez, 22, from Zaragoza, only has 21% vision, and started competing in para-judo at age eight, after trying swimming and realising it was not for him. And this decision in early childhood paid off, because not only has he just won the silver in the men's under-66 kilos category in Tokyo, but he competes in mainstream Olympic judo and trains with – and beats in competition – fully-sighted and able-bodied judokas.
Bike crashes and cancer were a bitter blow, but didn't stop these bronze medallists
Two other triathletes took home medals for Spain from Tokyo – Alejandro Sánchez Palomero, 34, from Salamanca, had previously won a bronze in swimming, for the 100-metres breaststroke, at Peking 2008, and has netted another bronze in triathlon from Tokyo. He learnt to swim age three, and played football, judo and handball from a very young age, training seriously in the pool from age eight and, by 12, was getting up to go swimming at 06.30 every morning before school as well as competing in national championships.
Alejandro's life changed when he was 17. Although his dream job would be in the fire brigade, he was planning to study architecture at university, and working part-time as a swimming instructor – then, one day, on the way home from the latter job on his motorcycle, he says: “An elderly man walked out in front of me where he shouldn't have, and in trying not to run him over, I lost control of my bike and fell off.
“Through this accident, I lost all movement and feeling in my right arm.”
As well as throwing his efforts into his swimming, Alejandro learned to write left-handed, took a degree in public relations and two master's degrees, in sports journalism and in coaching and emotional intelligence, and was eventually chosen for the Spanish para-swimming team in 2007, three years after the crash.
He did not take up triathlon until 2014, just two years after having decided to give up swimming due to 'disappointing results' at the London Paralympics.
The other Spanish triathlete is Eva Moral, 39, from Madrid, whose life was also turned upside-down within the space of a day: Keen and competitive, a member of Valdemoro Triathlon Trival Club and a practising lawyer, she fell during a cycle race on a steep downhill slope in the rain, toppled over the crash barrier, and plunged down a seven-metre ravine.
Eva panicked when she could not move from the waist down – a situation that turned out to be permanent, at just 27 years old.
But it has not kept her from triathlon, her true passion in life, or prevented her gaining a bronze medal for it in Tokyo.
Juan Antonio Saavedra, 47, from Pontevedra in Galicia, is the only Spaniard to earn a Paralympic medal in target shooting in Tokyo – he gained a silver at London 2012, and now a bronze, both in the 50-metres mixed category.
Part of Juan Antonio's left arm was amputated due to cancer when he was 15, but he started target shooting the following year and carried on competing in swimming at world championship level. An energy consultant, Juan Antonio says: “Not all shooters are policemen or work in the army. In fact, our sport, which is of extreme precision, has little to do with their work.”
In addition to the earlier-mentioned bronze medallists at Tokyo 2020, Spain also gained these for two other cycling road trials and a table-tennis doubles match.
Luis García-Marquina, 42, from Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz province), was a promising young motocross rider even at the age of five, was regional champion in Castilla-La Mancha several times, and was showing signs of near-future success at national level when a crash at age 23 left him paralysed from the waist down.
It was during a race in Albacete in 2002, Luis explains.
“About 10 metres after the start, a bike rear-shunted me, I lost my balance and fell off sideways. I wasn't injured and I'd had much more serious falls before, so I carried on – but it caused my vertebra to come out of joint.
“It was a really bitter blow; I was only 23 and had just started working as a lawyer two years earlier. But it wasn't so much my new situation that scared me – it was the fact I knew nothing about the world of disability and had no idea what I was up against.”
Luis discovered handbikes after 12 years of playing wheelchair basketball, which, he said, he was not terribly fussed about and mainly practised to keep in shape and give him a purpose. Handbiking 'just seemed to fit', he says, and within two years, was on the national team.
Bronze medallists who were born 'different' and wear it with pride
Christian Venge Balboa, 48, from Barcelona, has a sizeable collection of Paralympic cycling medals – bronze in Sydney and silver in Peking in track trial, and silver in Athens, golds in Peking and London and, now, a bronze in Tokyo for road race. He has been world champion nine times and European champion three times, lives in Castellón and is partially-sighted – category B3, which means he can make out shapes and images.
Jordi Morales, 35, from Esparraguera (Barcelona province) first won a singles bronze in Athens in table tennis, then a silver in London and a bronze in Tokyo in doubles, both of these with Álvaro Valera Muñoz-Vargas, 38, from Sevilla. Álvaro also has singles medals – a gold from Sydney, a bronze from Peking, and silvers from London and Rio.
Jordi was born with spina biffida, and says he loves the way children innocently ask him, “why do you walk like that?”
He always answers: “Don't you like it? Everyone has to have something that makes them different from everyone else, and this is my way of being different.”
Álvaro was born with a degenerative form of polyneuropathy which causes the muscles in his arms and legs to seize up and impedes his movement, but his table tennis training and the physical exercise it involves has helped slow down the progress of his condition.
He says he was practically born with a table tennis bat in his hand, as his father taught him how to play from a very young age.
“My dad is my main trainer and the person I owe the most to for getting me to where I am today, thanks to his dedication and effort in teaching me,” Álvaro reveals.
“He's a great thinker, and together we debate strategy, equipment and technique, sometimes spending entire evenings in the basement discussing different types of rubber or the best tactics for my backhand.”
Related Topics
MOST of Spain's Paralympic competitors arrived home this week after the long flight from the Japanese capital, many to a hero's welcome, although silver medallist Teresa Perales is still in hospital in Tokyo after suffering from an anxiety attack.
She is expected to be home 'in the next few days', according to the Spanish Paralympic Committee (CPE), when she will be able to take a proper break and wind down from the frenetic, high-intensity, euphoria-filled maelstrom that is the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the chance to stand tall on the podium and know you have made your country proud of you.
Teresa, 45, a journalist, author and former politician, became paralysed from the waist down aged 19 as a result of neuropathy, but has gone on to win 27 Paralympic medals in swimming – including her silver in the 50-metres backstroke in Tokyo.
Héctor Cabrera, 27, from Oliva (Valencia province) was greeted at Manises airport on Wednesday by a huge team of friends, family, colleagues and trainers, all desperate to see his bronze – his first Paralympic medal, from his second Games, in javelin-throw.
The up-and-coming star and twice-European champion suffers from the hereditary Stargardt Disease, which causes progressive vision impairment.
Typically, Spain's Paralympic medal haul is greater than its 'mainstream' Olympic collection, and Tokyo 2020 was no exception – with 36 overall, beating the Rio 2016 result of 31, including nine golds, plus 131 diplomas for fourth to eighth place, putting Spain 15th overall – as opposed to 22nd in the Olympics, with 17 medals, of which three were gold.
Spain's best results were mostly in athletics, swimming and cycling – and in all three together, with a handful of triathlon medals – plus one-off podium places for judo, target-shooting and table tennis.
And although every medal in every Games has a story behind it, a struggle, a passion, a rare talent, crippling self-doubt, punishing work ethic, a lone fight or a team of family and friends who sacrificed everything to make it happen, or a day-job to pay the bills whilst taking unpaid time off to compete, these stories are arguably more likely to be about triumph over troubles when the medals in question decorate Paralympic competitors. Especially those whose disabilities were acquired in later life rather than being present at birth, as they would have had to adapt emotionally as well as physically, not just to sport, but to all other aspects of life.
The back-stories behind Spain's successful Paralympians are, naturally, enormously diverse.
Our golden girls and guys in athletics
They include runner Adiaratou Iglesias, 22, from Mali, who was forced to flee her community aged 11 due to dangerous superstitions about albinos, making the journey to Logroño (La Rioja) where her brother and his wife lived. A reportedly dysfunctional family environment meant she ended up in a children's care home before being adopted by a Spanish family in Lugo, Galicia.
Being albino means she only has 10% vision, but special glasses increase this to 20%, which has not stopped her holding the national 100-metres record (12.42 seconds) or winning the Tokyo gold in this category and the silver in the 400 metres.
Gerard Descarrega, 27, won the 400-metres gold in Rio and again in Tokyo, alongside his guide Guillermo Rojo. His parents were told when he was four that he would eventually go blind due to a pigmentary retinosis; by 13, he had to use a giant magnifying glass, and by 16, lost his sight completely. His decision to take up running sparked fear and over-protection among his family, but they need not have worried.
“This is the best job in the world,” he told national daily newspaper La Vanguardia in 2019.
Another gold for Spain in athletics went to Yassine Ouhdadi el-Ataby, 27, who arrived in the country from his native Morocco aged six and who was born with cataracts. Surgery would be too high-risk and has been ruled out, but as Yassine left school at 15 'to help in the house', saying he 'had trouble studying' - “I found it hard to read the papers,” he says – he has 'got used to' not being able to see very well and is 'able to lead a normal life'.
Joining Héctor Cabrera at Valencia airport this Wednesday was his fellow shot-put competitor Kim López, who smashed the world record when he netted his gold with a 17.02-metre throw.
Kim, 32, is partially-sighted, like Héctor, who gained a seventh-place diploma in the same discipline with a throw of 13.03 metres.
The best on wheels
Alfonso Cabello, 27, from La Rambla (Córdoba province) was once again unstoppable – after his track-cycling individual gold and team seventh-place diploma in London 2012, team and individual bronze in Rio 2016, he scooped up the gold again in Tokyo in the one-kilometre against-the-clock track race, and the bronze in the team track speed trial with Pablo Jaramillo and Ricardo Ten.
Alfonso was born with the lower half of his left arm missing, so has never had to 'adapt' to living a normal life – for him, this already is normal; for his team mate Pablo, however, it was a struggle: The 44-year-old, who lives in Almería, was in a serious car crash aged 24, which caused major and irreversible damage to his left arm. Cycling, he says, was his therapy, helping him recover physically and face up to the emotional trauma of learning to live with a permanent disability.
And the other third of the team, Ricardo Ten, had even more adjusting to do, mentally and physically: At age eight, the Valencia-born swimmer and cyclist survived being electrocuted, but lost a leg and the majority of both arms, one just above the elbow and the other just below.
Now 46, he has quite a collection of medals, although up to and including London 2012, these were all for swimming: A silver and bronze in Atlanta 1996, two golds in Sydney 2000, a gold and a bronze in Peking 2008 and a bronze in the British capital.
Spain's other gold medallist in cycling, Sergio Garrote, 42, was another who had an emotional battle on his hands when he became disabled as an adult, but in the case of the road-race champion from Catalunya, his life actually improved as a result: It took him from being a 25-year-old building-site worker to top international biker and with a professional career in criminology and medicine.
A devastating accident on the job left him with permanent damage to his spine and wheelchair-bound, and as he railed against the frustration and injustice, Sergio's friends and family were a massive source of support, helping him see what he could still do, not what he couldn't.
Sergio went back to university, and after finishing his degree, discovered the handbike.
A bronze in the H1-2 road cycling trial and a gold in the H2 against-the-clock trial are the latest of his Paralympic achievements.
Susana Rodríguez Gacio, 33, from Vigo (Galicia), is a doctor and physiotherapist – being albino, which meant she was born with just 5% vision in one eye and 8% in the other, did not stand in the way of her medical degree studies or hospital training – and she has been involved in sports through the National Organisation for Blind Spaniards (ONCE), a disabled foundation which runs a daily lottery, since earliest childhood.
A year after qualifying as a doctor, she took part in the triathlon at her first Paralympics, Rio 2016, gaining a fifth-place diploma.
Since 2012, she has been world champion three times, reserve champion twice and bronze medallist twice, European champion, reserve champion and bronze medallist on two occasions each, and she has finally netted the missing piece for her awards display: A gold in Tokyo 2020.
Going swimmingly
Michelle Alonso is just 27, but has won the Paralympic gold in the 100-metres breaststroke at the last three consecutive Games, earning her the honour of being flag-bearer for Spain in Tokyo, a personal congratulations from the Canary Island regional president Ángel Víctor Torres, who called her 'an immense source of pride' for her home territory, and will probably receive the Tenerife Gold Medal now that the island council or Cabildo president, Pedro Martín, has put her name forward.
She is the first female to carry the Spanish flag at a Paralympic Games, a prestige she shared this time with Ricardo Ten.
Michelle has learning difficulties, did not start to speak until she was five, but it was physical problems – with her back – which led her to take up swimming when she was seven.
Her intellectual disability means she has often felt ostracised, and her trainer recommended she listen to music with her headphones on before starting a race, so she did not have to feel she was 'being laughed at'.
Michelle has always had the last laugh, though: She has won high-profile swimming competitions against girls and women her age with no disabilities.
Fellow Paralympic swimmer Marta Fernández Infante, also 27, took home an amazing three medals from Tokyo, one in each colour, for 50-metre races – a gold in breaststroke, silver in butterfly and bronze in freestyle.
Born in Burgos, a graduate in business and management, Marta, who has cerebral palsy, is a State civil servant in the neighbouring province of Valladolid.
Silver fish
Barcelona-born swimmer Nuria Marqués is only 22, but has already been world champion four times, reserve champion three times – the first being when she was only 16 – and bronze medallist five times, as well as taking home a gold in 400-metres freestyle and a silver in 100-metres backstroke from Rio 2016.
This time around, she repeated her performance in the 100-metres backstroke, coming second, and was third in the 200-metres medley, returning with a silver and a bronze.
“I was born with a physical disability in my left leg, but this hasn't stopped me competing or leading a normal life,” says Nuria.
“When I was nine months old, my parents took me to the local pool for a babies' swimming course...at age 11, I first competed in adapted swimming, and since age 13, I've been on the Spanish team.”
Spain gained nine silvers for swimming, including the two won by Antoni Ponce, 34, a physiotherapist from Vilafranca del Penedès. Born with bilateral degenerative spastic paraplegia, which mostly affects his legs and abdomen and is actually aggravated by his sport – although he considers the benefits outweigh the drawbacks – Antoni drives to Barcelona every morning to train before work.
Sarai Gascón, 28, from Tarrasa (Barcelona province), was born with the lower half of her left arm missing, but has been a consistent Paralympic medallist with a silver in Peking 2008, a bronze and a silver in London 2012, three silvers in Rio 2016, and a silver in the 100-metres freestyle and bronze in the 100-metres butterfly in Tokyo 2020.
Miguel Luque, 44, from Granollers, is another swimmer who has taken at least one medal home from every Games: Golds at Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, where he also gained a bronze; a bronze from Peking 2008; silvers from London 2012 and Rio 2016, and now a silver in Tokyo.
This, in the 50-metres breaststroke, was Spain's first in the Tokyo Paralympics, and in a sport which Miguel took up purely for therapeutic reasons and which he practises for four hours a day – he was born with congenital multiple arthrogriposis, which causes mass muscle contractions all over the body and has no cure, meaning he spends a lot of time in a wheelchair when he is not in the water or on his adapted bike.
Óscar Salguero, 23, from Sabadell, was hoping to match his incredible Paralympic début – a gold in the 100-metres breaststroke in Rio – but can still be extremely proud of the silver he won in the same class in Tokyo, especially given his very young age.
He was born with the lower half of his right arm missing, but went on to become world champion in 2017 and European champion in 2018 – somehow managing to fit in his punishing swimming training schedule with his full-time medical degree studies at Barcelona Autonomous University.
A year younger, Íñigo Llopis Sanz, from San Sebastián, has earned his first-ever Paralympic medal with a silver in the 100-metres backstroke after taking up swimming merely to help with a severe and permanent thigh injury he suffered as a child whilst playing football; before then, he played basketball and handball, but his real successes have been in the water, shattering the 200-metres world record in January 2020 and the national 100-metres backstroke record at around the same time, earning him his ticket to Tokyo.
More silvers: Athletics, triathlon and judo
Adiaratou is one of three women to earn silver medals for Spain in athletics, along with Míriam Martínez and Sara Martínez. No relation to each other – Míriam, 30, with a silver in shot-put, was born in Ibi (Alicante province) and Sara, 31, second in the long-jump, is from Madrid – they both did their country proud.
Míriam, a construction engineer, only took up shot-put two or three years ago, and came second with a 9.62-metre throw – before then, her favourite sport was indoor football, which she competed in semi-professionally along with her full-time career.
But a brain haemorrhage age 27, caused by a neurodegenerative autoimmune disease, left her with permanent spasms and lack of coordination, forcing her to learn to walk again; shot-put became her 'personal refuge'.
To go from being unable to walk due to a massive bleed to the brain, to winning a Paralympic silver, in less than three years, tells us everything we need to know about Míriam's level of determination and conscientiousness.
Sara, a full-time instructor at Spain's National Sports Council (CSD), took up athletics aged eight because she was 'bored rigid with swimming' as her instructor 'completely ignored her' – and she has words for anyone who thinks it is 'easier' to win medals at the Paralympics because there are so many more categories.
“I'd like to see even an able-bodied person train the way we do,” says Sara, who is partially-sighted.
“And I have better vision even than many of the others in my category.”
The other athletics silver medallist for Spain is Iván José Cano, 26, a telecommunications engineering graduate who has nearly finished a degree in physics at Alicante University, European champion in 2016 and reserve world champion in 2015, both in long-jump. He was born with impaired eyesight due to being albino, and says 'the horizon is not what you can see, but what you imagine it to be'. Iván also has a black belt in Taekwondo.
Triathlete Héctor Catalá, 33, from Serra near Valencia, who has come home with a silver medal, was born with the rare condition known as 'Best Disease' and which progressively reduces eyesight. Héctor currently has 10% vision, and this was enough for him to be written off by professionals for any kind of physical activity: A doctor specialising in sports famously stated he would never be capable of endurance-based competition, and as Héctor had never really achieved any results or shown great performance in swimming, he could have decided to give up.
Obviously he didn't – as is often the case, all this made him more determined than ever, and he began competing in paratriathlon in 2014. He has since turned professional, and is ranked among the top triathletes on earth; the name of his rare visual condition seems to be literal in Héctor's case, given that he is widely considered to be among the Best.
Sergio Ibáñez, 22, from Zaragoza, only has 21% vision, and started competing in para-judo at age eight, after trying swimming and realising it was not for him. And this decision in early childhood paid off, because not only has he just won the silver in the men's under-66 kilos category in Tokyo, but he competes in mainstream Olympic judo and trains with – and beats in competition – fully-sighted and able-bodied judokas.
Bike crashes and cancer were a bitter blow, but didn't stop these bronze medallists
Two other triathletes took home medals for Spain from Tokyo – Alejandro Sánchez Palomero, 34, from Salamanca, had previously won a bronze in swimming, for the 100-metres breaststroke, at Peking 2008, and has netted another bronze in triathlon from Tokyo. He learnt to swim age three, and played football, judo and handball from a very young age, training seriously in the pool from age eight and, by 12, was getting up to go swimming at 06.30 every morning before school as well as competing in national championships.
Alejandro's life changed when he was 17. Although his dream job would be in the fire brigade, he was planning to study architecture at university, and working part-time as a swimming instructor – then, one day, on the way home from the latter job on his motorcycle, he says: “An elderly man walked out in front of me where he shouldn't have, and in trying not to run him over, I lost control of my bike and fell off.
“Through this accident, I lost all movement and feeling in my right arm.”
As well as throwing his efforts into his swimming, Alejandro learned to write left-handed, took a degree in public relations and two master's degrees, in sports journalism and in coaching and emotional intelligence, and was eventually chosen for the Spanish para-swimming team in 2007, three years after the crash.
He did not take up triathlon until 2014, just two years after having decided to give up swimming due to 'disappointing results' at the London Paralympics.
The other Spanish triathlete is Eva Moral, 39, from Madrid, whose life was also turned upside-down within the space of a day: Keen and competitive, a member of Valdemoro Triathlon Trival Club and a practising lawyer, she fell during a cycle race on a steep downhill slope in the rain, toppled over the crash barrier, and plunged down a seven-metre ravine.
Eva panicked when she could not move from the waist down – a situation that turned out to be permanent, at just 27 years old.
But it has not kept her from triathlon, her true passion in life, or prevented her gaining a bronze medal for it in Tokyo.
Juan Antonio Saavedra, 47, from Pontevedra in Galicia, is the only Spaniard to earn a Paralympic medal in target shooting in Tokyo – he gained a silver at London 2012, and now a bronze, both in the 50-metres mixed category.
Part of Juan Antonio's left arm was amputated due to cancer when he was 15, but he started target shooting the following year and carried on competing in swimming at world championship level. An energy consultant, Juan Antonio says: “Not all shooters are policemen or work in the army. In fact, our sport, which is of extreme precision, has little to do with their work.”
In addition to the earlier-mentioned bronze medallists at Tokyo 2020, Spain also gained these for two other cycling road trials and a table-tennis doubles match.
Luis García-Marquina, 42, from Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz province), was a promising young motocross rider even at the age of five, was regional champion in Castilla-La Mancha several times, and was showing signs of near-future success at national level when a crash at age 23 left him paralysed from the waist down.
It was during a race in Albacete in 2002, Luis explains.
“About 10 metres after the start, a bike rear-shunted me, I lost my balance and fell off sideways. I wasn't injured and I'd had much more serious falls before, so I carried on – but it caused my vertebra to come out of joint.
“It was a really bitter blow; I was only 23 and had just started working as a lawyer two years earlier. But it wasn't so much my new situation that scared me – it was the fact I knew nothing about the world of disability and had no idea what I was up against.”
Luis discovered handbikes after 12 years of playing wheelchair basketball, which, he said, he was not terribly fussed about and mainly practised to keep in shape and give him a purpose. Handbiking 'just seemed to fit', he says, and within two years, was on the national team.
Bronze medallists who were born 'different' and wear it with pride
Christian Venge Balboa, 48, from Barcelona, has a sizeable collection of Paralympic cycling medals – bronze in Sydney and silver in Peking in track trial, and silver in Athens, golds in Peking and London and, now, a bronze in Tokyo for road race. He has been world champion nine times and European champion three times, lives in Castellón and is partially-sighted – category B3, which means he can make out shapes and images.
Jordi Morales, 35, from Esparraguera (Barcelona province) first won a singles bronze in Athens in table tennis, then a silver in London and a bronze in Tokyo in doubles, both of these with Álvaro Valera Muñoz-Vargas, 38, from Sevilla. Álvaro also has singles medals – a gold from Sydney, a bronze from Peking, and silvers from London and Rio.
Jordi was born with spina biffida, and says he loves the way children innocently ask him, “why do you walk like that?”
He always answers: “Don't you like it? Everyone has to have something that makes them different from everyone else, and this is my way of being different.”
Álvaro was born with a degenerative form of polyneuropathy which causes the muscles in his arms and legs to seize up and impedes his movement, but his table tennis training and the physical exercise it involves has helped slow down the progress of his condition.
He says he was practically born with a table tennis bat in his hand, as his father taught him how to play from a very young age.
“My dad is my main trainer and the person I owe the most to for getting me to where I am today, thanks to his dedication and effort in teaching me,” Álvaro reveals.
“He's a great thinker, and together we debate strategy, equipment and technique, sometimes spending entire evenings in the basement discussing different types of rubber or the best tactics for my backhand.”
Related Topics
More News & Information
A HOLLYWOOD legend joining folk-dancers from Asturias and showing off her fancy footwork in the street is not a scene your average Oviedo resident witnesses during his or her weekly shop. Even though their northern...
FOOTBALL fans have plenty of time to plan their trip to Spain for the 2030 FIFA men's World Cup, and almost any destination in the country should be within easy travelling distance of a stadium – a shortlist of 15...
NOW into its seventh stage and a new calendar month, Spain's version of the Tour de France concludes its only incursion into coastal towns on Sunday,