Nineteen UAB students to participate in the Olympic Games Paris 2024
Nineteen UAB students will be participating in the Olympic Games Paris 2024, taking place from 26 July to 11 August. Water polo and field hockey are the sports in which the largest number of UAB Olympic students will participatem followed by swimming, handball and modern pentathlon.
The bachelor's degree in Medicine is the most numerous among the different academic programmes that the UAB Olympians are studying: a total of three athletes, followed by Biomedical Sciences (2), Law (2), Nursing (2) and Business Administration and Management (2). Out of the 19 students, one studies in each of the following degrees: Political Science, International Relations, Physiotherapy, Electronic Engineering in Telecommunications, Veterinary Medicine, Biochemistry, Psychology and Sociocultural Gender Studies.
The water polo and field hockey teams are the ones with the greatest number of students from the UAB. Specifically, there will be six students for each modality. Players from the field hockey team are Gerard Clapés Castells (ADE), Julia Strappato Garreta (Biomedical Sciences), Clara Pérez Calderón (Medicine), Marc Recasens Llobet (ADE), Marta Segú Rueda (Law) and Pepe Cunill Clapés (Electronic Engineering in Telecommunications).
As for water polo, the UAB Olympians are the goalkeeper of the women's national team Laura Ester Ramos (Biochemistry), Álvaro Granados Ortega (Law), Nonas Pérez Vivas (Psychology), Paula Leitón Arrones (Sociocultural Gender Studies), Elena Ruiz Barril (Nursing) and Isabel Piralkova Coello (International Relations).
There are four Olympians who will compete in swimming: África Zamorano Sanz (Nursing), Paula Juste Sánchez (Medicine), Emma Carrasco Cadens (Biomedical Sciences) and Ainhoa Campabadal Amezcua (Veterinary Medicine).
There will also be two students in the Olympic Games Paris in the handball team: Ian Tarrafeta Serrano (Political Science and Public Management) and Daniel Fernández Jiménez (Physiotherapy).
And, finally, competing in the modern pentathlon will be medical student Laura Heredia Vives.
To these 19 UAB Olympians more could be added, since there are about ten UAB students who are waiting to go to the Olympic Games if they recover properly from the injuries they suffer. Next Saturday 20 July is the last day to register and they are waiting until the last moment to confirm their participation in the Olympic event.
More athletes in París 24
The Spanish team competing in the Olympic Games Paris 2024 is formed by a total of 382 athletes. This is the greatest number of athletes since Spain first began participating in the Olympics, except for the games held in Barcelona in 1992, in which it was the local team. For the first time, there are more women (192) than men (190) competing.
In addition to the merits of classifying as an Olympian and at the same time being a university student, some of the UAB athletes have a very high chance of winning medals given their high scores in the last Olympic Games. Thus, in the Tokyo 2020 games, the female water polo team won the silver medal and the male handball team won the bronze medal. The male water polo team also came in fourth place, the female field hockey team, seventh place, and the male field hockey team came in eighth place.