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Mireia Belmonte won the 200-metre butterfly this Wednesday and became the first Spanish woman to win an Olympic swimming gold medal. The 25-year-old, trained at Club Natació Sabadell, not only improved her result obtained four years ago in London, where she obtained the silver medal, but registered the fastest time so far this year, 2 minutes 4.85 seconds, beating Australian Maddie Groves by three hundredths of a second. World champion Natsumi Hoshi came third. Belmonte’s gold is to be added to the bronze in the women’s 400m individual medley on Saturday, which was also the first for Spain in any sport at Rio Olympics. The Catalan swimmer’s four medal career haul makes her Spain’s most successful swimmer.

The first medal for the Spanish delegation at the Rio Olympics was brought this Saturday by Catalan swimmer Mireia Belmonte. The record holder from Club NatacióSabadell came third in the women’s 400-metre individual medley, behind Hungarian Katinka Hosszu, who obtained the gold medal, and Maya DiRado from the US, who obtained the silver. The Catalan winner’s registered time was 4:32:39. Thus, Belmonte added a third medal to the two she obtained at the London Olympics in 2012, a silver medal in the 200-metre butterfly and another silver in the 800-metre freestyle. However, Belmonte couldn’t qualify for the 400-metre freestyle. Another Catalan swimmer, Jessica Vall, did classify for the 100-metre breaststroke semi-final. There are 97 Catalans sportsmen and women participating at the Rio Olympics, which represents the highest figure ever, being only higher for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

Catalan company Recam Làser, which specialises in laser cutting, is responsible for making the torch for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. The plant has already developed a final prototype and will start making torches this October and the 15,000 units must be delivered early next year. 800 torches will start the tour in Greece and the rest will go directly to Brazil. The torch is made out of recycled aluminium and weighs 1.5 kilos. When lit, it extends by a few centimetres and shows the colours of the flag of Brazil. Each torch will cost around 400 dollars. “This order will project us as the company which manufactured the torch in Rio 2016,” said president and founder of  Recam Làser, Pere Barrios.