14 March 2024
El nuevo equipo – the debut of Spain in wheelchair mixed doubles
A giant in sports like football, tennis and basketball, Spain can be regarded as a summer sport specialist. Finding a winter sports star from the nation is a rarity. Only five medals have been won by Spanish athletes at Winter Olympic Games and 44 at the Winter Paralympic Games.
Most of these come in Alpine skiing, the one winter sport Spain has won gold medals at both the Olympics and Paralympics.
Despite a modest number of athletes, the nation has been involved in curling for several years, even making the men’s A-Division at the Le Gruyère AOP European Curling Championships 2022.
Yet, wheelchair curling is a new venture for the nation, who debuted a four-person team at the World Wheelchair-B Curling Championships late last year. Skipping that team was Anna Nadal Rodriguez, who only took up the sport a year ago after attending a trial event held by the Spanish Ice Sports Federation. A second camp was held for a pre-selection of players, who started training in preparation for the World Wheelchair-B Curling Championships, where the team finished tenth.
Now, the skip is part of the team debuting at the World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles Championship.
“For the short time we had been training, we were happy with the results,” said Rodriguez, who admitted adapting to the sport was a bit of a shock to the system.
“When they started to explain the rules, the names of the lines, the size of the sheet, I didn’t understand anything.
“I felt very lost, but then, once on the ice, I started to see it clearly and we started throwing stones.
“First we threw without sense just looking at how far the stones reached, then, we started aiming and looking at the shooting line and little by little we saw how to aim and calculate the force and based on hours of training, we have been improving.”
Rodriguez’s introduction to the sport comes through her television, calling curling “curious” to watch. Despite being incredibly active in sport, she had never played a sport competitively. Now she is 38 years old, a relative latecomer to sport.
“I had never played before because there was no curling team that I knew of or an ice rink to practise curling in Spain until they did this wheelchair curling day,” she added.
“I’ve always loved playing sports, but I’ve always played them as a hobby, I’ve never competed at a national level.”
She plays in a wheelchair rugby team in her hometown of Manresa, and is involved in horse riding,
Alpine skiing and handbiking too.
“It took me a lot to learn to ski on a chair, but now I’m starting to go down more or less, well. I also really like skiing not for competing, but to enjoy the landscape, nature and the mountains.
“Handbike is to keep fit and go out with friends or acquaintances and enjoy good company.
“Horse riding, I was already doing it before I got injured eight years ago and I continue to ride horses, although now I do it more therapeutically to reduce spasticity and improve balance.”
It has been a difficult journey for Rodriguez, her four-person team and her mixed doubles partner Bertrand Tramont. Like other developing curling nations, resources are few and far between. For Rodriguez, it takes more than three hours in a car to reach Jaca, the only dedicated curling facility in the country.
“The problem in Spain is that we only have one ice rink dedicated to curling. In Madrid they have ice rinks that are not dedicated to curling, they hold open days once a month to try to attract us players, but it is not enough.
“It would be great if there were more and more athletes interested in curling and to be able to do more competitions at state level.”
As the Spanish Ice Sports Federation continue their expansion across the country, Rodriguez and Tramont are ready to make history in Korea.
Written by feature writer, Michael Houston
