Mireia Belmonte is back to being Spain’s medal darling…
The 25-year-old Spanish swimmer, who claimed her country’s first medal at the 2012 London Games, earned her country its first medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Belmonte took home the bronze medal in the Women’s 400m Individual Medley at the 2016 Rio Games, after finishing third behind Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu and USA’s Madeline Dirado with a time of 4:32.39.
Belmonte, a two-time silver medalist at the 2012 Summer Olympics, qualified for the final with the second fastest time but started rather poorly in the final with her in fifth place heading towards the halfway point.
But she never gave up and found the resilience to challenge for a medal as she began a monumental stretch of front crawl, which cut the gap between her and Hannah Miley to eight tenths.
In the last 50 meters Belmonte finally got the edge and finished just ahead of the British swimmer.
After the race she told reporters of the sheer fight behind her triumph.
“I felt a little weird, I was getting tired but I fought until I couldn’t fight anymore, until my body had no more strength,” she explained.
The gap between her and Miley was at one point so significant that it looked almost impossible for Belmonte to claw her way back.
“It looked quite far between me and her but I never stopped fighting, in the last seven or eight meters I barely breathed, it was what God wanted.”
