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Winter Olympics week-one round-up: Spain's snowy success
11/02/2022
HOW is Spain getting on at the Winter Olympics? The country's medal count has never been anywhere near that of the mainstream summer Olympics, and many of this year's competitors have never won any international titles, meaning Spain was fielding a fairly green team – in fact, for eight out of the 14, Peking 2022 is their first-ever Games.
But history has already been made within the first few days, thanks to the now-legendary Queralt Castellet, who has bounced back from a very dark place and finally seen her sporting fortunes turn around.
Others have broken their personal records or achieved more than they hoped for – or exactly what they hoped for – whilst a handful have been left disappointed, but for first-timers, nobody expects to see them on the podium just yet.
After all, Spain has only won five Winter Olympic medals in total, showing it's no easy feat.
Here's how it's looking for Team Spain a week in.
First diploma for Spain: Newcomer Javier Lliso is walking on (Big) Air
Madrid-born Javier, 24, joked that his teacher told him off for watching Sochi 2014 under the desk on his phone in class, not realising that her errant pupil would be representing their country in the next-but-one Games.
It's his first time in the Winter Olympics, and he has not yet reached a podium in an international tournament – although his 15th overall ranking and 8th in his class in Big Air freestyle skiing earlier this season, coupled with his finishing 12th in the World Cup in Slopestyle, means he set off for the Chinese capital with the status of being the highest-placed Spaniard at both levels in his sport.
Peking 2022 is the first year Big Air has been included in the freestyle category at the Winter Olympics, and has gone off with a bang for Spain and for Javi – his best international result yet, the gravity-defying youngster came sixth after taking a calculated risk in the first round, earning him and his country their first Olympic diploma of the year.
“I knew where the moves I did were going to leave me, but my main plan was to do a Switch 18 instead of a safety with a tail which would have given me crucial extra points,” Javi admits.
“In the second round, I opted for a safer double 16 and, in the third, to go all out and risk it.
“I tried to use my head more than my heart to try to get the result that I did in the end – and it worked!”
Javi's best two jumps out of a possible three gave him 171.50 points, only 9.5 below bronze medallist Henrik Harlaut – the Swedish veteran earned 181, pipped at the post by the USA's Colby Stevenson with 183 for the silver, whilst Norway's Birk Ruud was crowned champion with 187.75.
Given Javi's age, he should in theory be good for at least another two Winter Olympics, so it's very likely that hopes will be pinned on him before the decade is out to up Spain's historic medal count.
And talking of medals...
Halfpipe snow-boarder and bronze medallist at the most recent World Championships, Barcelona-born Queralt Castellet is the most experienced of the Spanish Winter Olympic squad – and she's now the only living female from Spain with a medal from the Games.
The late Blanca Fernández Ochoa, bronze in Slalom in Albertville (France) 1992, was, until this week, the only Spanish woman to have taken home a Winter Olympic medal; Queralt is therefore the highest-placed female Spaniard and second-highest placed overall, beaten only by Blanca's now-deceased brother, Paquito Fernández Ochoa, who won the Slalom gold at Sapporo (Japan) 1972.
Spain's only other two Winter Olympic medallists are Regino Hernández, in boardercross snow-board, and Javier Fernández, in figure-skating, both of whom took home bronzes from Pyeongchang 2018 and retired shortly afterwards.
Queralt's terrifying-looking airborne spins and leaps inside a concave piste shaped like the bottom half of a giant tube only earned her a finishing position of 26 at Torino 2006, but as she was just 16 and it was her first Winter Olympics, she and her fans could not be too disappointed.
After that, it has always seemed as though the odds were stacked against Queralt, despite her obvious talent. She was heading for the bronze at Vancouver 2010, then suffered a fall and was eliminated; she was in the running for the silver in Sochi 2014, but right at the last second in both her moves, she made unexpected errors, which knocked her down to 11th.
Finally, in Pyeongchang 2018, Queralt earned her first diploma after coming seventh – she had been tipped for a medal, but was still weighed down by the biggest tragedy of her life at the time, one that nearly saw her pack up her sport at the age of 25.
“I'd just won the silver medal in the World Championships [Kreischberg 2015], when I got a call...they told me Ben had taken his own life. And everything just stopped, snow-boarding included.”
Queralt had been with Ben Jolly, her boyfriend and coach, since she was 19 and he was 23, travelling with him to his native New Zealand for six months and then the USA for another six to train.
He had been diagnosed with two incurable brain tumours the previous year, which led to his committing suicide at home whilst his girlfriend was away competing.
“We were a couple, then he became my trainer, my life companion, my everything...we lived in each other's company 24 hours a day. What we had between us was always so special,” Queralt remembers.
Friends and family helped her through it, and eventually Queralt decided to just 'go out on the snow and see what happened'.
“As soon as I hit the snow, I felt happy, I felt good, I felt comfortable, and I understood that this was really the only thing I had left,” she admits.
Back in 2015, Queralt said she hoped one day she would be able to 'look up to heaven from the Olympic podium' and dedicate her medal to Ben – and, seven years on, she has been able to do just that.
It has taken Queralt half her life to reach this moment – she's 32 – and she was not expecting to beat defending Olympic champion Chloe Kim, from the USA, who is largely considered to be the world's best and whose 94 points in the first round surpassed everyone else's score in all three, meaning the highest achievement the board-rider from Sabadell (Barcelona province) could feasibly boast would be a silver medal.
Queralt only reached seventh in the ranking in the first round, with a score of just 69.25, but finished fourth in the second, earning her a place among the 12 who would be going through to the final.
Japan's Sena Tomita took the bronze and Sena's sister Ruki gained a fifth-place diploma, behind China's Xuetong Cai.
As well as having competed in five Winter Olympics – a number only equalled by Andalucía's María José Rienda and Cantabria's Juan Jesús Gutiérrez, but never surpassed – Queralt has been flag-bearer for her country twice at the opening ceremony, the first time being in Vancouver 2010 and then again, a week ago, 12 years on from the first time.
'Seven sandwich' for three-timer Lucas Eguibar
Wrecked physically and mentally, although mainly the former – feverish and with aching back – Lucas, who celebrated his 28th birthday in Peking on Wednesday, convinced the Spanish Olympic Committee to let him hang around in the Chinese capital for another couple of days after finishing his snow-boarding challenge.
“Putting myself through a 20-hour flight in this state, I think it would have killed me,” confesses Lucas.
“I knew it was going to be a really tough, hard-fought race, but I'm satisfied with how it went.
“There was a bit of everything going on – despite all the problems I faced, I was still in the running for a medal.
“In the final, I went super, super, super fast, then suddenly the Italian [Tommaso Leoni] fell, and I nearly went flying.”
Lucas says he fell flat on his coccyx – always a blow to the system – and his back was still aching a day or two later.
He was so overwhelmed with emotion after hurling body and soul into the race that he kept 'crying non-stop', Lucas admits.
The Basque cross-country snow-boarder came seventh at his first Winter Olympics – Sochi 2014 – and finished a disappointing 33rd in Pyeongchang 2018, but Peking 2022 has seen him come full circle and pick up another seventh-place diploma, the second of the Games for Spain and the 11th in the country's history, after Javi Lliso broke the double-figure barrier with his sixth place.
Clearly, these being his third Winter Olympics, Lucas had been hoping for a medal – especially as he is defending World Champion, and was individual and team reserve champion in 2017, meaning he is no stranger to top-level international competition success – but at least he will not be going home empty-handed when he does eventually board the plane after a well-earned rest.
Highest-finishing Spaniard since 1984: Imanol Rojo still has one lifeline left
Until Imanol, 31, came along, Spain's best Winter Olympic result in 15-kilometres freestyle skiing was 45th, achieved by Josep Giró at Sarajevo 1984. Now, the veteran Olympian from Tolosa in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa has improved on it nearly 38 years later, finishing 39th.
It was his second competition at Peking – the first was the 30-kilometres skiathlon, which combines 15 kilometres of classical skiing and another 15 kilometres' freestyle; although he was not in the medals or even the diplomas, Imanol broke his own personal record by finishing in 42 minutes, 15.2 seconds, narrowly missing a top-20 position.
He reportedly started off at a consistently cracking pace in the 15-kilometres freestyle, and then slowed somewhat at around the halfway point, losing between approximately 36 and 83 seconds from about the third to the eighth kilometre.
Imanol admitted that he was starting to run out of energy after around 10 kilometres, and in hindsight, thinks he might have burned himself out by starting too fast.
His third and final lifeline is on Saturday, February 19, in the 50-kilometres mass start, which is where his strength really lies and where his finishing positions in Winter Olympics have been best overall – this time, he wants to try to crack his highest yet, number 17, or at least beat his 21st position gained in the 30-kilometres skiathlon.
Consistently at number 20-something, but still the only Spanish 'skeleton'
Ander Mirambell, who will turn 39 in just under a week, has been making sporting history for Spain for 12 years and counting – and even if he came last in every Winter Olympic event, he still would. All he has to do is enter, and that's it.
Ander, from Calella (Barcelona province) is the only Spaniard ever to enter the Games lying face-down – to date, nobody else from his country has competed in 'skeleton', a type of small, lightweight bobsleigh you ride head-first and on your stomach.
His results have been almost identical in every one of his four Winter Olympics so far – Ander's best was when he finished 23rd in Pyeongchang 2018, and his worst was 26th at Sochi 2014; this time around, he has matched his Vancouver 2010 position of 24th.
But Peking 2022 has given Ander his fastest time at a Winter Olympics, at one minute, 2.34 minutes.
“I'm satisfied with that, though,” Ander admits.
“Those of us who did not make the top 20 were the ones who were unable to attend the test runs in October 2021.”
The others have only been down the Yanqing National Sliding Centre circuit 12 times, meaning they were far less familiar with it than those who tried it out multiple times four months ago.
This time around, it was incredibly competitive, Ander reveals, but concedes: “I've enjoyed myself loads; we really did our best, and I'm proud of the support I've been getting from Spain.
“It's much more than just a race. The fact that skeleton is still present in our country, and that the general public is still glued to the Winter Olympics, is our real success – it's the best victory I'll be taking home with me.”
What's everyone else been up to?
Elsewhere, Adur Etxezarreta ended 17th in the Downhill slalom – the best result ever obtained by a Spaniard in this discipline at Olympic level – but was eliminated in the Super-G after missing one of the gates; Thibault Magnin did not make the line-up in Big Air but has another chance in Slopestyle on February 16, as does Javi Lliso; Jaume Pueyo had travelled all the way to China for just three minutes of action – not long enough to enjoy himself, but 'just long enough to suffer', in the 20-year-old's own words – missing out on the quarter-final by just one second.
Finishing in two minutes, 56.77 seconds, Pueyo's Olympic performance ended in his elimination, although he should have at least another three Games ahead of him and he is already focusing on his follow-up challenge.
“My next aim is to fight for a medal in the World Under-23 Championship,” Jaume told reporters.
Núria Pau, who grappled with injuries that firstly put her out of action for five months, and then left her only just recovering in time to start training for her first Winter Olympics, was simply on cloud nine at the idea of competing in the Games at all – so she was not overly disappointed when she finished 40th in the first leg of the Super-G Slalom.
She veered off the circuit in the second race, meaning she was eliminated, but given that her results at European Cup final level have been between 18 and 30 and her sole World Cup entry to date saw her end 36th, Núria's Olympic début is not too far off the mark and in another four years, experience is likely to see her soar up the leaderboard.
Who's up next?
Saturday (February 12) and Monday (February 14) brings Sheffield-born Olivia Smart and her dance partner, Barcelona's Adrià Díaz, onto the rink for rhythmic and freestyle ice-dancing respectively; Monday is also when Thibault and Javi get another crack, this time in Slopestyle.
If they make it, they'll be in the final on Tuesday (February 15).
Quim Salarich hits the slopes on Wednesday (February 16) in Slalom, and on Friday (February 18), Laura Barquero and Marcos Zandron make their début in figure-skating (short routine).
They return the following day for the pairs freestyle, when Imanol gets his last chance at a medal or diploma in the 50-kilometres mass start skiing.
Related Topics
HOW is Spain getting on at the Winter Olympics? The country's medal count has never been anywhere near that of the mainstream summer Olympics, and many of this year's competitors have never won any international titles, meaning Spain was fielding a fairly green team – in fact, for eight out of the 14, Peking 2022 is their first-ever Games.
But history has already been made within the first few days, thanks to the now-legendary Queralt Castellet, who has bounced back from a very dark place and finally seen her sporting fortunes turn around.
Others have broken their personal records or achieved more than they hoped for – or exactly what they hoped for – whilst a handful have been left disappointed, but for first-timers, nobody expects to see them on the podium just yet.
After all, Spain has only won five Winter Olympic medals in total, showing it's no easy feat.
Here's how it's looking for Team Spain a week in.
First diploma for Spain: Newcomer Javier Lliso is walking on (Big) Air
Madrid-born Javier, 24, joked that his teacher told him off for watching Sochi 2014 under the desk on his phone in class, not realising that her errant pupil would be representing their country in the next-but-one Games.
It's his first time in the Winter Olympics, and he has not yet reached a podium in an international tournament – although his 15th overall ranking and 8th in his class in Big Air freestyle skiing earlier this season, coupled with his finishing 12th in the World Cup in Slopestyle, means he set off for the Chinese capital with the status of being the highest-placed Spaniard at both levels in his sport.
Peking 2022 is the first year Big Air has been included in the freestyle category at the Winter Olympics, and has gone off with a bang for Spain and for Javi – his best international result yet, the gravity-defying youngster came sixth after taking a calculated risk in the first round, earning him and his country their first Olympic diploma of the year.
“I knew where the moves I did were going to leave me, but my main plan was to do a Switch 18 instead of a safety with a tail which would have given me crucial extra points,” Javi admits.
“In the second round, I opted for a safer double 16 and, in the third, to go all out and risk it.
“I tried to use my head more than my heart to try to get the result that I did in the end – and it worked!”
Javi's best two jumps out of a possible three gave him 171.50 points, only 9.5 below bronze medallist Henrik Harlaut – the Swedish veteran earned 181, pipped at the post by the USA's Colby Stevenson with 183 for the silver, whilst Norway's Birk Ruud was crowned champion with 187.75.
Given Javi's age, he should in theory be good for at least another two Winter Olympics, so it's very likely that hopes will be pinned on him before the decade is out to up Spain's historic medal count.
And talking of medals...
Halfpipe snow-boarder and bronze medallist at the most recent World Championships, Barcelona-born Queralt Castellet is the most experienced of the Spanish Winter Olympic squad – and she's now the only living female from Spain with a medal from the Games.
The late Blanca Fernández Ochoa, bronze in Slalom in Albertville (France) 1992, was, until this week, the only Spanish woman to have taken home a Winter Olympic medal; Queralt is therefore the highest-placed female Spaniard and second-highest placed overall, beaten only by Blanca's now-deceased brother, Paquito Fernández Ochoa, who won the Slalom gold at Sapporo (Japan) 1972.
Spain's only other two Winter Olympic medallists are Regino Hernández, in boardercross snow-board, and Javier Fernández, in figure-skating, both of whom took home bronzes from Pyeongchang 2018 and retired shortly afterwards.
Queralt's terrifying-looking airborne spins and leaps inside a concave piste shaped like the bottom half of a giant tube only earned her a finishing position of 26 at Torino 2006, but as she was just 16 and it was her first Winter Olympics, she and her fans could not be too disappointed.
After that, it has always seemed as though the odds were stacked against Queralt, despite her obvious talent. She was heading for the bronze at Vancouver 2010, then suffered a fall and was eliminated; she was in the running for the silver in Sochi 2014, but right at the last second in both her moves, she made unexpected errors, which knocked her down to 11th.
Finally, in Pyeongchang 2018, Queralt earned her first diploma after coming seventh – she had been tipped for a medal, but was still weighed down by the biggest tragedy of her life at the time, one that nearly saw her pack up her sport at the age of 25.
“I'd just won the silver medal in the World Championships [Kreischberg 2015], when I got a call...they told me Ben had taken his own life. And everything just stopped, snow-boarding included.”
Queralt had been with Ben Jolly, her boyfriend and coach, since she was 19 and he was 23, travelling with him to his native New Zealand for six months and then the USA for another six to train.
He had been diagnosed with two incurable brain tumours the previous year, which led to his committing suicide at home whilst his girlfriend was away competing.
“We were a couple, then he became my trainer, my life companion, my everything...we lived in each other's company 24 hours a day. What we had between us was always so special,” Queralt remembers.
Friends and family helped her through it, and eventually Queralt decided to just 'go out on the snow and see what happened'.
“As soon as I hit the snow, I felt happy, I felt good, I felt comfortable, and I understood that this was really the only thing I had left,” she admits.
Back in 2015, Queralt said she hoped one day she would be able to 'look up to heaven from the Olympic podium' and dedicate her medal to Ben – and, seven years on, she has been able to do just that.
It has taken Queralt half her life to reach this moment – she's 32 – and she was not expecting to beat defending Olympic champion Chloe Kim, from the USA, who is largely considered to be the world's best and whose 94 points in the first round surpassed everyone else's score in all three, meaning the highest achievement the board-rider from Sabadell (Barcelona province) could feasibly boast would be a silver medal.
Queralt only reached seventh in the ranking in the first round, with a score of just 69.25, but finished fourth in the second, earning her a place among the 12 who would be going through to the final.
Japan's Sena Tomita took the bronze and Sena's sister Ruki gained a fifth-place diploma, behind China's Xuetong Cai.
As well as having competed in five Winter Olympics – a number only equalled by Andalucía's María José Rienda and Cantabria's Juan Jesús Gutiérrez, but never surpassed – Queralt has been flag-bearer for her country twice at the opening ceremony, the first time being in Vancouver 2010 and then again, a week ago, 12 years on from the first time.
'Seven sandwich' for three-timer Lucas Eguibar
Wrecked physically and mentally, although mainly the former – feverish and with aching back – Lucas, who celebrated his 28th birthday in Peking on Wednesday, convinced the Spanish Olympic Committee to let him hang around in the Chinese capital for another couple of days after finishing his snow-boarding challenge.
“Putting myself through a 20-hour flight in this state, I think it would have killed me,” confesses Lucas.
“I knew it was going to be a really tough, hard-fought race, but I'm satisfied with how it went.
“There was a bit of everything going on – despite all the problems I faced, I was still in the running for a medal.
“In the final, I went super, super, super fast, then suddenly the Italian [Tommaso Leoni] fell, and I nearly went flying.”
Lucas says he fell flat on his coccyx – always a blow to the system – and his back was still aching a day or two later.
He was so overwhelmed with emotion after hurling body and soul into the race that he kept 'crying non-stop', Lucas admits.
The Basque cross-country snow-boarder came seventh at his first Winter Olympics – Sochi 2014 – and finished a disappointing 33rd in Pyeongchang 2018, but Peking 2022 has seen him come full circle and pick up another seventh-place diploma, the second of the Games for Spain and the 11th in the country's history, after Javi Lliso broke the double-figure barrier with his sixth place.
Clearly, these being his third Winter Olympics, Lucas had been hoping for a medal – especially as he is defending World Champion, and was individual and team reserve champion in 2017, meaning he is no stranger to top-level international competition success – but at least he will not be going home empty-handed when he does eventually board the plane after a well-earned rest.
Highest-finishing Spaniard since 1984: Imanol Rojo still has one lifeline left
Until Imanol, 31, came along, Spain's best Winter Olympic result in 15-kilometres freestyle skiing was 45th, achieved by Josep Giró at Sarajevo 1984. Now, the veteran Olympian from Tolosa in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa has improved on it nearly 38 years later, finishing 39th.
It was his second competition at Peking – the first was the 30-kilometres skiathlon, which combines 15 kilometres of classical skiing and another 15 kilometres' freestyle; although he was not in the medals or even the diplomas, Imanol broke his own personal record by finishing in 42 minutes, 15.2 seconds, narrowly missing a top-20 position.
He reportedly started off at a consistently cracking pace in the 15-kilometres freestyle, and then slowed somewhat at around the halfway point, losing between approximately 36 and 83 seconds from about the third to the eighth kilometre.
Imanol admitted that he was starting to run out of energy after around 10 kilometres, and in hindsight, thinks he might have burned himself out by starting too fast.
His third and final lifeline is on Saturday, February 19, in the 50-kilometres mass start, which is where his strength really lies and where his finishing positions in Winter Olympics have been best overall – this time, he wants to try to crack his highest yet, number 17, or at least beat his 21st position gained in the 30-kilometres skiathlon.
Consistently at number 20-something, but still the only Spanish 'skeleton'
Ander Mirambell, who will turn 39 in just under a week, has been making sporting history for Spain for 12 years and counting – and even if he came last in every Winter Olympic event, he still would. All he has to do is enter, and that's it.
Ander, from Calella (Barcelona province) is the only Spaniard ever to enter the Games lying face-down – to date, nobody else from his country has competed in 'skeleton', a type of small, lightweight bobsleigh you ride head-first and on your stomach.
His results have been almost identical in every one of his four Winter Olympics so far – Ander's best was when he finished 23rd in Pyeongchang 2018, and his worst was 26th at Sochi 2014; this time around, he has matched his Vancouver 2010 position of 24th.
But Peking 2022 has given Ander his fastest time at a Winter Olympics, at one minute, 2.34 minutes.
“I'm satisfied with that, though,” Ander admits.
“Those of us who did not make the top 20 were the ones who were unable to attend the test runs in October 2021.”
The others have only been down the Yanqing National Sliding Centre circuit 12 times, meaning they were far less familiar with it than those who tried it out multiple times four months ago.
This time around, it was incredibly competitive, Ander reveals, but concedes: “I've enjoyed myself loads; we really did our best, and I'm proud of the support I've been getting from Spain.
“It's much more than just a race. The fact that skeleton is still present in our country, and that the general public is still glued to the Winter Olympics, is our real success – it's the best victory I'll be taking home with me.”
What's everyone else been up to?
Elsewhere, Adur Etxezarreta ended 17th in the Downhill slalom – the best result ever obtained by a Spaniard in this discipline at Olympic level – but was eliminated in the Super-G after missing one of the gates; Thibault Magnin did not make the line-up in Big Air but has another chance in Slopestyle on February 16, as does Javi Lliso; Jaume Pueyo had travelled all the way to China for just three minutes of action – not long enough to enjoy himself, but 'just long enough to suffer', in the 20-year-old's own words – missing out on the quarter-final by just one second.
Finishing in two minutes, 56.77 seconds, Pueyo's Olympic performance ended in his elimination, although he should have at least another three Games ahead of him and he is already focusing on his follow-up challenge.
“My next aim is to fight for a medal in the World Under-23 Championship,” Jaume told reporters.
Núria Pau, who grappled with injuries that firstly put her out of action for five months, and then left her only just recovering in time to start training for her first Winter Olympics, was simply on cloud nine at the idea of competing in the Games at all – so she was not overly disappointed when she finished 40th in the first leg of the Super-G Slalom.
She veered off the circuit in the second race, meaning she was eliminated, but given that her results at European Cup final level have been between 18 and 30 and her sole World Cup entry to date saw her end 36th, Núria's Olympic début is not too far off the mark and in another four years, experience is likely to see her soar up the leaderboard.
Who's up next?
Saturday (February 12) and Monday (February 14) brings Sheffield-born Olivia Smart and her dance partner, Barcelona's Adrià Díaz, onto the rink for rhythmic and freestyle ice-dancing respectively; Monday is also when Thibault and Javi get another crack, this time in Slopestyle.
If they make it, they'll be in the final on Tuesday (February 15).
Quim Salarich hits the slopes on Wednesday (February 16) in Slalom, and on Friday (February 18), Laura Barquero and Marcos Zandron make their début in figure-skating (short routine).
They return the following day for the pairs freestyle, when Imanol gets his last chance at a medal or diploma in the 50-kilometres mass start skiing.
Related Topics
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