The last day of the Paralympic Games of Paris 2024 has left a bittersweet final aftertaste for the Spanish delegation. The athlete Elena Congost (Barcelona, 36 years old) has been disqualified this Sunday for letting go of a few meters from the finish line the rope of her guide, mine Carol, when she was suffering cramps in the last stretch of the race. Congost has loaded against the judges and has claimed to be “shattered” by the arbitration decision. “I would like everyone to know that they have not disqualified me for cheating, but for being a person and For that instinct that comes out when someone is falling. For helping. For taking it and enduring it, ”said the athlete while crying after knowing the disqualification.
Congost and Carol had achieved third place in the female T12 marathon test, but the cramps that Carol was suffering at the edge of the goal caused the Catalan to release the rope to allow him to stop. The judges of the evidence have disqualified it for having breached article 7.9.5, which points out that any athlete who releases the belt of his guide before the goal will be disqualified.
These have been the fifth games for the Paralympic athlete, which did not compete since Rio 2016 after a maternity break. “It's sad because I also came from being without a scholarship and being in the stake and it was one of my goals. I will not get a scholarship and be in the adop (support for the sport Paralympic objective) and they will leave me out of all when I think I have shown what I could do,” the Catalan confessed.
The other face of the coin on this closing Sunday has been the silver medal obtained by the athlete Alberto Suárez in Marathon T12 – with which Spain has reached 40 metals in total. Suárez (Oviedo, 46 years old), who was already gold in London 2012 and Plata in Rio 2016, has not been able to impose itself on Tunecino Wajdi Boukhili, but the silver medal has been hung by ending the race at 1m 57s of Boukhili.
The Spaniards have improved their performance this year if compared to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, where 31 medals managed to hang, and also exceeds the last brand, that of Tokyo 2020, where the Paralympic team harvested a total of 36 metals.
This year, swimming has been the sport in which the Spaniards have managed to get on the podium more times. 15 Medals has won the Spanish delegation in this discipline. Below that brand is athletics, in which eight medals have been achieved. In third position is road cycling, with five metals.
Triathlon, track cycling, wheelchair fencing, judo, table tennis, wheelchair tennis and sports shooting are the other sports in which the Spaniards have managed to bite metal.
In this way, Spain ends its participation in the Games of Paris 2024 with a medallero that combines seven golds – two less than those achieved in Tokyo 2020 – 11 silver and 22 bronzes. A total of 40 with which the Spaniards are located in the seventeenth global position of the Paris 2024 medallero, where China has been placed in first position with 220 metals.
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