Spain reaches seven Winter Olympic medals and adds its third consecutive Games

The Catalan Oriol Cardona and the Andalusian Ana Alonso achieved this Thursday the first two medals of the Spanish delegation present at the Winter Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo (Italy) after adding a gold and a bronze, respectively, in the Sprint event of mountain skiing, the sixth and seventh in the winter Olympic history of Spain, again with some success for the third consecutive event.

This Thursday, Spain celebrated the first gold in a Winter Games in 54 years, with Cardona picking up the baton from the historic ‘Paquito’ Fernández Ochoa. While Ana Alonso’s bronze, the first Spanish medal in Milan-Cortina and who in October suffered a serious training accident that seriously jeopardized her presence at the event, means that the Spanish delegation will put two athletes on the Olympic podium, as it did in 2018.

The first Spanish medal in the Winter Olympic Games was more than half a century ago. The remembered ‘Paquito’ Fernández Ochoa achieved the gold medal in special alpine ski slalom in Sapporo 1972, in Japan, beating the Italian Gustav Thöni, one of the myths of this discipline, with more than a second advantage and avenging his disqualification in giant slalom. He was a pioneer and paved the way with the best Spanish result in the Winter Games.

Spain had to wait 20 years to play metal again, in Albertville 1992, in France, and did it again with the surname Fernández Ochoa. It was Blanca, Francisco’s sister, who became the first Spanish woman to achieve an Olympic medal, winter or summer, with a bronze in slalom to continue the successes of a pioneering and historic family in national sport.

After this, Spanish sport, with the stain of the Spanish-German cross-country skier Johann Muehlegg whose three golds in Salt Lake City (United States) in 2022 were withdrawn for doping, needed another seven editions to see itself on the Olympic podium at the Winter Games. In PyeongChang 2018, in South Korea, the rider Regino Hernández and the skater Javier Fernández, both now retired, ended the Spanish drought thanks to the achievement of two bronze medals, the first in their respective sports, snowboarding, in the cross-country category, and figure skating on ice.

The Ceuta athlete was competing in his third Games and dreamed of a gold medal in the cross-country final, but a very eventful race meant he took the bronze. Medal of the same color as that of Javier Fernández, seven-time European champion in figure skating and double world champion, who was just one point away from the silver medal.

And just four years later, in Beijing 2022, in China, rider Queralt Castellet closed her fifth Olympic participation – in all five she qualified for the final – with the best reward, a silver medal in halfpipe, to become the first Spanish woman to win a medal of this color in a Winter Games. In Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo, her sixth Games, the one from Sabadell could not revalidate that medal and finished 10th.