Valencia, July 7 (EFE).- The Spanish team certified this Sunday with its victory against the Bahamas in the final of the Pre-Olympic Championship in Valencia its qualification for the Paris Games this summer, an event that will be its seventh consecutive Olympic tournament and in which it will be measured in the first phase against Australia, Canada and Greece.

The places at stake in the Valencia tournament and the Piraeus tournament were framed in Group A of the Paris tournament, in which Australia and Canada were already assigned and in both cases they went to the host teams, in the case of Helen after winning the final against Croatia.

As in Tokyo 2020, the twelve participating teams are divided into three groups of four and the top two from each as well as the two best thirds will face off in the quarter-finals.

In Group B were France, Germany and Japan, who were joined by Brazil after winning their pre-Olympic tournament, while in Group C are already the United States, South Sudan and Serbia and Puerto Rico and Lithuania will fight for the last place in the final of the San Juan tournament.

Spain's failure at the 1992 Barcelona Games, the elimination after the defeat against Angola, the famous “Angolazo”, continued when the team failed to qualify for the 1996 Atlanta Games.

Since then, Spain has not missed an Olympic event and has even come close to winning gold twice. After the bittersweet taste of ninth place at Sydney 2000 and seventh place at Athens 2004, where a fateful clash with the United States in the quarter-finals sent them home, the team's golden age in this tournament began.

In Beijing 2008, two years after being proclaimed world champion, Spain, with Aíto García Reneses on its bench, reached the final of the tournament and held off Kobe Bryant's United States until the end (118-107) to win its second silver title after Los Angeles 1984.

Four years later, history repeated itself in London with the same teams in the lead and the same final result in which the American team retained the gold and the Spanish team the silver.

At Rio de Janeiro 2016, a poor start to the tournament saw Spain land on the side of the draw that also included the United States, which eliminated them in the semi-finals and sent them to a bronze medal match in which they beat Australia by a very close 88-89.

Something similar happened in Tokyo 2021. The defeat against Slovenia in the third match of the group stage led to a clash with the United States that allowed the new competition system to qualify for the quarter-finals. The defeat left Spain out of the medal fight and meant goodbye to the team of Pau and Marc Gasol and Sergio Rodríguez, key players of these Olympic decades.

Immersed in a complex generational change, Spain will participate in its seventh consecutive Games in Paris with the aim of fighting for medals but after assuming that with its new reality, it is already a success to be among the twelve participants. EFE

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