MADRID, 8 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish athlete Houssame Benabbou has been proclaimed this Saturday continental champion of 50 kilometers in the European Championship of the distance that has been held in the town of Sotillo de la Adrada, an appointment in which Alberto Puyuelo has hung the medal of silver and in which Spain has achieved two team runners-up.
The man from Extremadura joined the Aragonese Puyuelo, Carles Monllort and Severino Felipe in a leading group that remained firm until the halfway point of the race. At kilometer 30 (1:43:16), only Benabbou and Puyuelo remained with chances of victory, and shortly after the now champion struck the blow to reach the finish line with a time of 2:49:20.
Puyuelo played for the podium with the British Davies and Mycroft and finally managed to take second place (2:52:39), while Andrew Davies achieved bronze (2:53:09). For his part, Monllort finished fourteenth (3:00:36); the sum of the times of the first three athletes (8:42:35) allowed Spain to hang the team silver, just a minute and a half behind the British (8:41:05).
The Spanish performance was completed by Martínez, who was sixteenth with 3:02:41; Hernando, thirty-first with 3:16:18; and Philip, thirty-eighth in 3:24:11.
In the women’s event, Spain won the team silver, led by Yésica Mas, seventh with 3:28:14. Bárbara Ramón was tenth (3:35:03), Maite Etxezarreta twelfth (3:38:57) and Pilar Rubió, thirteenth (3:40:19). The sum of the three best times (10:42:14) was enough for Spain to be second behind Great Britain (10:09:53).
The women’s singles title was won by Ireland’s Cairtiona Jennings in 3:19:42, followed by Britain’s Alison Lavender in 3:21:26, and Poland’s Dominika Stelmach in 3:21:50.