Spain celebrated just ten days ago, thanks to the silver that Barcelona’s Queralt Castellet captured in the snowboard halfpipe at Beijing 2022, the fifth medal in its entire history in a Winter Games; the second of a woman. A path that opened the Madrilenian Blanca Fernandez Ochoa -sadly disappeared in 2019- by marking a milestone that this Sunday marks exactly 30 years: those that have passed since she became the first Spanish woman to win an Olympic medal, both in the Summer and Winter Games.
Months before the enormous emergence that the Barcelona ’92 Games represented for Spanish sport, Blanca, born on April 22, 1963 in Madrid, became the first Spanish Olympic medalist. And until last week she emulated her Queraltwas the only woman who had won a medal for Spain in a Winter Games: the bronze in the alpine ski slalom, in the Albertville (France), in 1992. A trophy that turns 30 this Sunday.
the medal of Whitein chronological order the second in Spain in a winter event, came twenty years after the one won by his older brother, Francisco -popularly known as ‘Paquito‘-, elevated to national hero after surprising the entire world by capturing Olympic gold in that same discipline at the Sapporo’72 Games (Japan). The only Spanish winter Olympic champion, who died in 2006; and whose image was always linked to his.
The outstanding career of White found initial inspiration in his brother’s Olympic feat Paco. A feat that occurred when she was eight years old and that she recalled in an interview with Agencia EFE in 2014, shortly before the Sochi Games (Russia) started.
“I remember that, due to the time difference, the race was seen here in Spain around four or five in the morning. We lived in the Ski School, in Navacerrada. I remember my father shouting ‘gold, gold, gold ‘. The ski teachers shouted, everybody shouted. I got up. Everybody was jumping and shouting”, recalled the Cercedilla champion.
“I remember the reception, when Paco I return to spain. My brother was an Olympic champion, but I was slow to appreciate what he had really achieved; which was something really incredible”, pointed out White, whose medal had to arrive almost by “legal imperative”, four years after starring, in 1988, in one of the most impressive moments in the entire history of Spanish snow: when he touched Olympic glory in Calgary (Canada); where he fell in the decisive second round of the giant after having set the best time in the first.
Calgary’s were his third Olympic Games, after having competed in Lake Placid’80 (USA) and Sarajevo’84 (Bosnia-Herzegovina, of that in the former Yugoslavia). And the eight hour difference with Nakiska, in Canadian Alberta, caused that second round, played in ‘prime time’, to become one of the most important television moments in Spanish skiing: with his brother Paco -who would end up hugging, crying- commenting on the race for TVE.
The Madrilenian was going to retire after those Games, but “among all, relatives, federations, friends and even himself (Juan Antonio) Samaranch (then president of the International Olympic Committee)” convinced her to continue, as she had pointed out in another interview with Efe in February 2017, on the occasion of the ‘Silver Wedding’ of that historic medal.
“The Calgary thing was a real jug of cold water for me. I came from having a fantastic season, in which I almost never came out of the top five. I arrived at those Games with the feeling that I ‘catch’ a fixed medal. in the second race when I was first it was an absolute disappointment”, admitted, then, the great White.
“Despite the fact that it was hard, I remember it well. It was a Games to which I went very well prepared, mentally and physically. I remember my arrival, the training sessions… I was under tension, but with less than people imagine “I got there thinking that it was my last Games, that I was fit and that, with the work done, whatever it was going to be, it would be. That was my mentality in Calgary. Those Games didn’t go as I expected, but I remember them fondly.” , explained White in another interview with Efe in Whistler Mountain (Canada), within the framework of the 2010 Vancouver Games, to which, as his older brother did years before, he attended as a television commentator.
The Cercedilla champion commented that “luckily”, Calgary’88 were not her last Games. And four years later she won the much desired and deserved bronze in the Albertville ’92 slalom, a medal that did justice to a great sports career; and that she was the first of a Spanish in an Olympic event -summer or winter-.
Meribel, golden brooch
White He put the icing on the cake of his brilliant career at the Meribel station (Savoy), in a race won by the Austrian petra kronberger, one of the largest in history. A test in which five hundredths separated her from a fourth place that would never have been valued in its fair measure. And that she had blurred a brilliant sports career of hers.
“Yes. I have always said that that bronze medal tasted like gold to me. Four years later it was four more years, with its seasons, which are very hard, especially autumn, if you train alone, without having any reference… And, in addition, with the ghost of Calgary on top”, he recalled Fernandez Ochoa in the aforementioned interview.
“I went with a quintal on each leg. And the accumulated tension of four years, knowing that those would be the last Games, no matter what happened. That physically destroyed me,” he told Efe White at the Vancouver Games, the first Games to which he attended without pressure -that of having to compete- and in which he shared, from another perspective, many dinners with the special envoys of the Spanish press.
“I had strange symptoms: insomnia, my period came when I wasn’t supposed to… I had a sore on my lip that also left late, things like that. It was a tension that had accumulated for so long that, when I released it, caused strange things to happen,” he added.
“The Albertville medal was a payment for persistence, for sacrifice. Work always pays. And when you fall, you have to get up. Always. It doesn’t matter how many times you fall. The important thing is that you get up again,” he commented. to Efe Whitethat until the Andalusian beat her record Maria Jose Rein -the first woman to hold the position of Secretary of State for Sport- was the Spanish woman with the most wins in the Alpine Skiing World Cup.
His first triumph in the annual competition of the regularity of the king winter sport came in the giant of Vail (USA), in 1985; and then he won three times in slalom: Sestriere’88 (Italy), Morzine’91 (France) and Lech’92 (Austria). His four victories were only surpassed fourteen years later, when Rein raised the Spanish historical record for wins in that competition to six. But nobody born in Spain equals, in any snow discipline, the twenty podiums (all in giant and slalom) that he signed White in the World Cup. And it took 26 years for two of his compatriots to emulate his Albertville Olympic performance.
Four years ago, at the PyeongChang Games (South Korea), the player from Ceuta from the Andalusian federation Regino Hernandez was bronze in the snowboard boardercross, and the man from Madrid Javier Fernandez captured identical medal in figure skating.
In Beijing 2022, which closes this Sunday, Queralt raised the meager list of Spanish winter sport Olympic trophies to five and became the second woman to enter that relationship. The first in the entire history of Spain -both in the summer and winter Games-, the great pioneer, was White: his legendary Olympic bronze turns thirty this Sunday.