Spain names swimming team for Paris 2024 | Gonzalez going for Olympic gold

Spain announces an in-form team for Paris Olympic Games including newly minted national record holders Hugo Gonzalez, Carmen Weiler, Sergio De Celis and Carlos Garach.

The Royal Spanish Swimming Federation has announced a final team of eighteen swimmers for Paris 2024 following the completion of the Spanish Open Championships.

Eight swimmers will compete in individual events, with Emma Carrasco, Carmen Weiler, Africa Zamorano Sanz, Sergio De Celis, and Arbidel Gonzalez all booking their spots during the final week of qualifying. They join Carlos Garach, Mario Molla Yanes, and Hugo Gonzalez who had already secured their places at earlier competitions.

Hugo Gonzalez is heading to his third Olympic Games and is expected to challenge for a medal in both backstroke events. Earlier this year he became the first Spanish male world champion in almost thirty years when he won the 200m Backstroke at Doha 2024. It was a swim that was as much of a breakthrough for Gonzalez, as it was for his country.

It had been seven years since the 25-year-old recorded a personal best in that event. Even through college stints at Auburn University and the University of California, Gonzalez had lived in the shadow of his gold medal-winning time of 1:56.69 from the World Junior Swimming Championships back in August 2017. And it wasn’t because he had been absent from the world stage. Two Olympic Games and five World Aquatics Championships – but still, the Spaniard had been unable to replicate that swim in Indianapolis.

That was until Doha, where Gonzalez re-announced himself to the world by shaving more than a second off that seven-year-old time to move from 55th to 19th on the all-time list over four laps.

“I’ve never been this fast so early in the season so now it gives me a great boost of confidence. It’s a challenge about what we can do better now and what we can work on. We’ve done a good job here. Next thing I have to do is keep working in order to lower my time,” Gonzalez told World Aquatics after his Doha gold medal.

And lower his time he did, posting 1:54.51 at last week’s Spanish Championships to break the super-suited national record set by Aschwin Wildeboer in 2009. It was also the second-fastest 200m Backstroke in the world since Tokyo 2020 (now third after Hunter Armstrong’s 1:54.33 at the US Trials last week). Gonzalez will head to Paris 2024 as one of the favourites in the 200m Backstroke as he aims to become Spain’s first male Olympic gold medallist since Martin Lopez-Zubero won the same event at Barcelona 1992.

Teenager Carlos Garach will also head to Paris in the form of his life having broken his own national record in the 400m Freestyle at last week’s Spanish Championships. Garach, who will turn twenty the day before the Opening Ceremony, has also qualified for the 800m Freestyle, 1500m Freestyle, and the 10km Marathon event. Carmen Weiler was the other Paris team member to break national records last week setting new marks in both the 100m & 200m Backstroke events.

In addition to the eight individual event swimmers, Spain will also send eight relay-only swimmers who have earned starts in the Men’s 4 x 100m Freestyle, Men’s 4 x 200m Freestyle, Men’s 4 x 100m Medley, and Women’s 4 x 200m Freestyle.

Rounding out the team is Doha 2024 silver medallist Maria de Valdes, who will aim to go one better in Paris in the 10km Marathon, and Angela Martinez, who is also taking on the sole open water event.