MADRID, 30 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Norwegian soccer player Caroline Graham Hansen, the Paralympic triathlete Susana Rodríguez and the women’s water polo team were some of those awarded this Monday by the sports newspaper ‘MARCA’ during its 2023-2024 Women’s Sports Awards gala held at the Hipódromo de la Zarzuela from Madrid.
One of the great protagonists of the afternoon was FC Barcelona winger Caroline Graham Hansen, who was recognized with the Pichichi Award for Top Scorer and also with the MARCA MVP Award, while her coach in recent seasons, Jonatan Giráldez, received the for Best Coach.
They were not the only awards that women’s football won, which was also distinguished with the Atlético de Madrid goalkeeper Lola Gallardo (Zamora Award), with the Colombian forward of Real Madrid, Linda Caicedo (Best Goal), the Athletic Club full-back Nerea Nevado (Revelation Player) and the Biscayan referee Olatz Rivera, elected Best Referee.
In addition, the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games had their share of prominence with the awards to the women’s water polo team, historic gold in the French capital and which received the MARCA Best of the Year Award, collected by the players Martina Terré and Nona Pérez.
The Award for Best Paralympic Athlete went, for the second consecutive year, to Susana Rodríguez, the triathlete who repeated her gold from Tokyo 2020 in Paris 2024 in the category of athletes with visual disabilities along with Sara Pérez as a guide.
The Iberdrola Podium Award went to the visually impaired athlete Elena Congost, who was deprived of the bronze medal in the T12 category of the Paralympic Games marathon when she was disqualified for helping her guide Mia Carol enter the finish line and let go for a few moments the rope that united them.
Other competitors in Paris 2024 last summer, such as the athlete Águeda Marqués and the sailor Gisela Pulido, were awarded the Breakthrough Athlete Award and the Resilience Award, respectively.
Finally, the Spanish youth women’s handball team was awarded the Promesas Award, after becoming world champion for the first time in the under-18 category.
Numerous personalities attended the event, such as the presidents of the Higher Sports Council, José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes; and from the Spanish Olympic Committee, Alejandro Blanco; the president of League F, Beatriz Álvarez; the Councilor for Sports of the Madrid City Council, Sonia Cea; the general secretary of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, Álvaro de Miguel, and the women’s national football team coach, Montse Tomé, among others.
Rodríguez Uribes was in charge of closing the event, for which he thanked the sports newspaper for its initiative “especially for what it means, the visibility and recognition of women’s sports” and which he considers “a good step in the direction of equality.”
“The new Sports Law, which is very little old, insists a lot that sport is a right, of citizens, of men and women, and we have to defend that it is a universal right, that there can be no discrimination, no type of exclusion, and that generates an obligation for everyone, for the public powers, individually, but for society as a whole, to make it effective,” he added.
The leader emphasized “the work” that is being done “between everyone so that women’s sports are at the top” and that this causes “more and more athletes to begin to be role models for boys and girls, not just girls.” , also as children”. “You see how sport is also helping to understand the equality that we need in a developed society like ours,” he said.
“The other great value that we have to continue working for is respect in sport. I think it is a message that we cannot leave aside. Sport unites and when we have been in the Olympic and Paralympic Games we are all united and that In the end, rivalry has to translate into respect and recognition of the other,” he continued.
Finally, Rodríguez Uribes congratulated all the winners, “magnificent athletes.” “May you continue on that path. And to all of us who are here, may we continue united together hand in hand in defense of Spanish sport in general and women’s sport in particular,” he stated.