Spain
2014

One Cross at Two Metres

Spain's 2014 opened indoors with a medal decided by a single failed attempt. In the world indoor high jump final in Sopot on 8 March, Ruth Beitia was the cleanest jumper in the field: first-time clearances at every height up to 1.97 m, where Mariya Kuchina and Kamila Lićwinko each needed two tries. Then, at 2.00 m, the order reversed — the other two went over first time and Beitia knocked the bar off once before clearing. Nobody managed 2.02 m. On countback the two first-time clearances shared the gold, and the woman who had been flawless for four heights took bronze.

It was still a two-metre jump in a world final, and it set up the summer. Beitia was 35.

Two Golds Past the Bend

At the European Championships in Zürich, 12–17 August, Spain sent 74 athletes and finished eighth in the table with six medals: two gold, one silver, three bronze. The first gold came on 13 August, when Miguel Ángel López won the 20 km walk in 1:19:44; the second on the final evening, when Beitia cleared 2.01 m to keep the high jump title she had won in Helsinki two years before.

Borja Vivas opened the account on the first day with silver in the shot put, 20.86 m. The three bronzes came from Ángel Mullera in the steeplechase in 8:29.16, Indira Terrero over 400 m in 51.38 and Diana Martín in the women's steeplechase in 9:30.70. Eusebio Cáceres was fourth in the long jump with 8.11 m, and behind López a 20-year-old Álvaro Martín walked to sixth in 1:21:41 — the first championship placing of the man who would win this same title in 2018 and, ten years later, Olympic gold.

One footnote has to be read alongside the bronze. In March 2016 Mullera was suspended for two years for evading an anti-doping control; the Zürich medal was not annulled, but this page does not list him among the season's successes without saying so.

Silver in the Mud

The team competitions told a different story from the individual one. At the European Team Championships in Braunschweig in June, Spain was eighth of twelve nations with 224.5 points and won no event; Jesús España was second in the 5000 m in 13:56.00 and Cáceres third in the long jump. At the World Half Marathon Championships in Copenhagen in March, Ayad Lamdassem was the best Spaniard, seventeenth in 1:01:22, and the men's team finished tenth.

Then, at the European Cross Country Championships in Samokov on 14 December, both senior teams won silver. The men — Alemayehu Bezabeh with individual bronze in 32:30, Mohamed Marhum sixth, Antonio Abadía and Roberto Alaíz — scored 36 points to Turkey's 33; the women — Iris Fuentes-Pila ninth, Trihas Gebre, Diana Martín and Lidia Rodríguez — finished behind Great Britain. Where Spain scored as a group, in the mud, it was second in Europe.

Two names that would define the next decade were elsewhere in 2014. María Pérez, 18, was fifth in the 10 km walk at the World Junior Championships in Eugene on 23 July. Orlando Ortega spent the whole season as a Cuban athlete; he would not be cleared to compete for Spain until July 2016. And one name was absent for a different reason: Marta Domínguez, the 2009 world steeplechase champion, did not compete while her biological-passport case was pending. In November 2015 the Court of Arbitration for Sport banned her for three years and annulled her results from 5 August 2009 to 8 July 2013, the Berlin gold included.

From this season · in the archiveJoma Spain Pro Elite Team 2014 Long TightsJoma team long tights of the 2014 allocation — red with a yellow hip panel, ESP on the thigh, mesh behind the knee and yellow calf panels with ankle zips for changing spikes. Polyamide and elastane, size M.90,00 €View piece →

The Joma Spain Kit of 2014

The two pieces we hold from this season are the tights the team trained and raced in. The long tights are red with a yellow panel at the hip, the Joma mark and ESP in yellow on the thigh, a stylised yellow feather printed down the leg, mesh behind the knee and yellow calf panels closed by ankle zips — the cold-weather race layer, cut so spikes go on without taking the tights off. The half tights are the sprinters' outer layer: red, ESP in yellow with a dark outline, fine yellow speed lines along the side. Both are labelled Made in China, size M; the long tights are 92 percent polyamide and 8 percent elastane.

Joma Spain 2014 · in the archiveJoma Spain Pro Elite Team 2014 Half TightsThe half tights of the same issue: red, ESP in yellow with a dark outline, fine yellow speed lines down the side and the Joma mark on the right leg — the outer racing layer of the sprinters.100,00 €View piece →

The next chapters of this team — Beitia's Olympic gold at 37, then the Berlin ten and the walking double of 2018 and 2023 — run through the rest of the Season Series; the whole national arc is in our history of athletics in Spain.