Spain secured a seventh-place finish in the medal table at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham with eight medals after adding two bronzes on the final day of competition on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The women’s marathon team claimed the first of the two medals, finishing third behind Great Britain and Italy. Carolina Robles led the Spanish team with eighth place individually in her second marathon and first international race over the distance, recording a time of 2:28:07.<\/p>\n
Fatima Azzahraa Ouhaddou finished 15th and Ester Navarrete was 18th to complete Spain’s scoring. Robles, who is from Seville and specialises in the 3,000m steeplechase, moved up to the marathon after the Paris Olympics and had prepared for Birmingham in her home city.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old remained with the leading group for much of the race but began to struggle after the 35km mark. She eventually finished 34 seconds outside the individual bronze medal position.<\/p>\n
“In the last change of pace I was already finished and the goal was to hang on to finish in the top eight,” Robles said.<\/p>\n
Her eighth-place finish ensured Spain secured the team bronze in a race won by Finland\u2019s Alisa Vainio in 2:22:26.<\/p>\n
The men\u2019s marathon team narrowly missed out on the podium, finishing fourth. Jorge Gonz\u00e1lez was Spain\u2019s leading runner in 14th place in 2:11:10, followed by Carlos Mayo and Ilias Fifa.<\/p>\n
\nMixed relay delivers final medal\n<\/p>\n
Spain then secured their eighth and final medal in the evening when the mixed 4x100m relay team took bronze behind Great Britain and Germany.<\/p>\n
Guillem Crespi made a clean first change to Maribel P\u00e9rez, who handed over to Andoni Calbano. Calbano then delivered the baton to Jael Bestu\u00e9 with Spain in contention for a medal.<\/p>\n
Bestu\u00e9, a finalist in the individual 200m, held third place through the final straight to complete a successful relay performance after both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s 4x100m teams had been eliminated earlier in the championships.<\/p>\n
Spain also came close to a ninth medal in the men\u2019s 3,000m steeplechase, where Dani Arce finished fourth, one second behind the podium. Arce challenged Germany\u2019s Ruppert throughout the race but dropped to fourth during the final lap.<\/p>\n
\nEight-medal haul\n<\/p>\n
Overall, Spain’s eight-medal haul included two golds, two silvers and four bronzes. <\/p>\n
In addition to the women\u2019s marathon team and the mixed 4x100m relay, earlier in the week Mar\u00eda P\u00e9rez and Paul McGrath won gold in the women\u2019s and men\u2019s half-marathon race walks, while Miguel \u00c1ngel L\u00f3pez and Marta Garc\u00eda took silver in the men\u2019s marathon race walk and women\u2019s 5,000m, respectively.<\/p>\n
Spain also collected bronzes through Raquel Gonz\u00e1lez in the women\u2019s marathon race walk and Mohamed Attaoui in the men\u2019s 800m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain secured a seventh-place finish in the medal table at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham with eight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4222,3132,785,27859,6531,2111,27860,27861,17,778],"class_list":["post-71635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-4222","tag-athletics","tag-birmingham","tag-championships","tag-eight","tag-european","tag-finish","tag-medals","tag-spain","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}