The seventh Olympic Games of Teresa Portela, the canoeist who defies time | Paris 2024 Olympic Games

The first time that Teresa Portela (Cangas do Morrazo, Pontevedra; 41 years old, 42 on May 5) participated in the Olympic Games, neither Facebook nor Instagram existed, the Twin Towers in New York were standing and it had only been a few months since José María Aznar had won his second general election in Spain. Life was very different from what it is now in 2000, when the Galician canoeist competed at just 18 years old in her first Games, those in Sydney. Last Wednesday, Teri, as those who know her call her, qualified for Paris 2024. This summer will be the seventh Olympic event for an athlete who seems to defy time in a discipline as explosive as canoeing, where power, Speed ​​and the ability to repeat the strokes with maximum intensity are essential to stay on top.

Portela, who is the first Spanish woman to qualify for seven Games – in Spain, only the walker Jesús Ángel García Bragado, with eight participations, surpasses her – affirms that she is “excited” and “absolutely happy.” “It’s been 24 years in the elite, and it’s my seventh consecutive Games. It’s incredible, I don’t even know how to describe it. It may seem like it’s normal, but I know it’s not,” he says over the phone. “It’s very difficult. You have to pass many screenings, many controls, many world championships to get a place for the Games. And it is difficult to maintain, especially for so many years and with medal options,” he adds.

The word that the Galician uses to relate her seventh qualification for an Olympic event is resilience. The K1-200, the modality in which she won silver in Tokyo in 2021—her first Olympic medal—and in which she had been focusing for more than a decade, will not be in Paris. There will be three women’s events: the K1-500, the K2-500 and the K4-500. Portela, who lives in Pontevedra with her daughter Naira and her husband, was planning to prepare the K1-500 alone, but the Royal Spanish Canoeing Federation spoke with her to propose a plan after the Tokyo Olympics: to move the national team from Seville to this Galician city so that under the mirror of the canguesa and the leadership of its coach, Daniel Brage, Spain tried to qualify a K4 for the Games 16 years after achieving it for the last time in Beijing 2008, when Portela placed fifth in this modality and achieved one of the five Olympic diplomas he has.

“The federation project was ambitious and new, and then I rethought it,” Portela recalls. The Spanish canoeing team moved to Pontevedra at the end of 2021, where they train at the Galician Sports Technique Center, in the Pontillón de Castro reservoir and in the Lérez river – it crosses the city -, although sometimes they paddle to the sea. The K4-500 results came soon. In the 2021/2022 season they were second in the World Cup and fourth in the World Cup, in which last year they achieved bronze and access for a Spanish boat to Paris 2024. The K4 led by Portela, and in which also There is the Galician Carolina García, the Asturian Sara Ouzande and the Extremaduran Estefanía Fernández, swept last Wednesday in the selective organized by the Spanish federation in Pontillón de Castro to decide who will represent Spain in this modality in the Games, which will be the seventh of Portela, but the first for her three companions. “Achieving a competitive K4 in such a short time is really exciting. We have months left to train a lot and improve a lot, but we have the hope of fighting among the best,” she says.

Teresa Portela, who is the only Spanish woman Olympic medalist in calm waters, started canoeing at the Ría de Aldán Sea Club (Cangas) in the summer of 1991, when she was nine years old. She is not the only Olympic athlete who has left this fishing town of 26,000 inhabitants located between Vigo and Pontevedra and which in summer is filled with tourists due to its privileged location in the Rías Baixas in front of the Cíes Islands. He also includes other paddlers such as David Cal – the Spaniard with the most medals in the Games along with Saúl Craviotto with five metals –, with whom Portela coincided in kindergarten; Carlos Pérez Rial, Perucho; Sonia Molanes Costa or Rodrigo Germade, who in Paris will also compete again in the K2-500 and K4-500. “It is spectacular that a town like this is competing in Olympic medals with any other country,” jokes the canoeist, who remembers that the Celta goalkeeper Iván Villar and the goalkeeper of the national handball team Rodrigo Corrales were also at the Tokyo Games. where they got a silver and a bronze, respectively.

The canguesa paddler, who has a degree in Physical Education Teaching and a degree in Physiotherapy, traveled to the Sydney 2000 Games when she was still a junior, but was left out of the K1-500 finals. In Athens 2004 (K2-500 and K4-500) and in Beijing 2008 (K4-500) she was fifth and obtained three Olympic diplomas. The final that hurt her the most was the K1-200 in 2012, when at the London Games she suffered her biggest blow: she arrived at her best moment, but it went wrong and she lost about 300 thousandths that cost her the medal when she finished fourth. Being in Rio de Janeiro (6th place) four years later was already a victory because the classification came only 16 months after giving birth to her daughter.

The little girl, Naira, could not travel to Tokyo in 2021 due to the pandemic and had to stay with her grandparents in Aldán, from where she watched her mother win the silver medal. This summer she will definitely be in Paris with her father, David Mascato – who is also Portela’s physio and was an Olympic canoeist in 2000 and 2004 – to cheer up her mother. “She already comes to all the competitions there are, she is one of the team, her and my husband. We will all go,” says Portela. They will accompany her this summer in a great opportunity to expand her Olympic medal tally, but only she, a unique case of longevity in events as explosive as canoeing, knows if this time will be the last: “My attention is 100% focused on Paris, I don’t think further. After? Who knows”.

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