Sport

Dani Rincón and Ariana Geerlings are two of the rising stars within Spanish tennis who train at Rafa Nadal Academy, a place where the values of this tennis player from Manacor can be felt with every step. And every stroke.

Woman, winter sport and success. Few, very few, can feel represented by these three words in a country like Spain and one of them is Queralt Castellet. A ‘rara avis’ that faced a challenge: the Beijing Games.

The figure of Paula Badosa rises, after her exceptional end of the season in 2021 and with the permission of Garbiñe Muguruza, as the benchmark that Spanish women's tennis has been yearning for for years.

There was a time, not so long ago - the airwaves sounded like ‘Las chicas son guerreras’ (‘Girls are Warriors’) - in which girls like Silvia Navarro and Carmen Martín, today’s captains of the Spanish handball team lacked female references. Times have changed and now they are the mirror in which thousands of girls can look at themselves.

Tokyo 2020 is five months away, and Fátima Gálvez is honing her skills to have a shot at her first Olympic medal. After her fifth place in London and a diploma in Rio, the sport shooter is going for the podium, giving it her all to keep hitting targets and breaking down barriers like gender inequality.

To live among and compete against the stars of the NBA is something only a few can aspire to. José Manuel Calderón is one of the Spanish talents who wrote the golden pages of Spanish basketball history and earned their spurs in the best league in the world.

Carla Suárez, one of the standard bearers of Spanish women's tennis of the past few years, will say goodbye to the courts at the end of the season. Her next move? To put herself at the service of the national team, starting on 7 and 8 February at the Fed Cup tie against Japan.

This summer, her name will be recorded in Spanish sports history. As soon as her paddle hits the Japanese water, Teresa Portela will be the first Spanish female athlete to compete in six Olympic Games. A few months before fulfilling that dream, she’s telling ‘Talento a bordo’ about the many other challenges she’s facing in the near future.

Technique, tactics and physical condition are the main aspects sportsmen and women work on. However, until very recently, the mind, one among the pillars for elite athletes, had been largely forgotten, as experts in sports psychology and fact themselves confirm.

Taekwondoist Jesús Tortosa is going to Tokyo Olympics feeling optimistic and with plenty of possibilities to take home a medal. This will be his second Olympic Games—time to conquer the Japanese tatami.