Jaël Bestué’s speed doesn’t prevent Spain from finishing sixth at the European Championships in Vallehermoso.

Spain, you look like speed, a waiter might say; speed, you have a woman’s name, a bad poet might say, at least at the torrid seven in the evening on the last Sunday of June in Vallehermoso, but such sentimentality likely means nothing to Jaël Bestué, a powerhouse, who bounces with the joy of a happy girl when she finishes the 200m race she has sprinted through on street eight, an atomic curve, an explosive finish. Boom. 22.19 seconds. A world-class time. The eighth of the year in a list where, except for the Olympic champion who leads it, Julien Alfred, there are only American names. The best European mark of the year. The best mark ever achieved by a Spanish athlete. A record that had waited 35 years to be erased, since the stunning Sandra Myers, a delicate pianist, steel sprinter, set it at 22.38 seconds.

It’s broken by a 24-year-old Catalan who is maturing rapidly and confidently in the wise hands of coach Ricardo Diéguez, The Puma, riding the wave of success that Spanish sprinters have generated this spring. Around Bestué, a medical student in Barcelona, and Paula Sevilla, two magnets, a generation is growing, a collective that materializes in relays, feeding their self-esteem and ambition. “It never crossed my mind. I was focused on surpassing my personal best of 22.54, earning the maximum points for Spain, but I never imagined seeing a one in the second digit of my time. I’m still speechless,” she says, still sweating, still breathless, still freshly recalling her curve in the 4×100 relay that broke the national record (42.11 seconds) the night before. “This gives me a sense of what I’m capable of. I was looking at the track and telling myself, wow, you can do anything, this is your dream, your place is here. I saw the scoreboard and thought, ‘I am a real athlete.’ Last year didn’t go well for me, but it helped me grow personally to reach this mark.”

Defeated rivals embrace her affectionately, and the crowd cheers her on, which she thanks with her almost hoarse voice. “The energy came from the stands,” says Bestué, whose victory, the second Spanish win after Attaoui’s 800m on Friday, and her 16 points resonate as a trigger for the team’s comeback toward the summit of the European Championships, but it’s a misleading sound.

Spain is not tracing a straight trajectory but rather the curved path of a roller coaster, with few highs, many flats, and quite a few lows, a metaphor often used by champions, who sometimes forget that all roller coasters end in a dizzying drop to the ground.

At Bestué’s shout, the other competitors on the team respond quietly. Spain starts sixth before the mixed 4×400 relay, and despite their good race — the team from Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid, Manuel Guijarro from Villarrobledo; Blanca Hervás from Majadahonda; Julio Arenas from Parla, and Paula Sevilla from La Solana breaks the national record at 3m 10.48s in a race where they finished fourth thanks to the comeback of Blanca Hervás and Paula Sevilla — they end up sixth, 19 points behind the third place (Germany) they desired. Italy wins again, as it did two years ago, with Poland repeating in second. The speed of the women does not save the team.

Bestué is now an athlete, and a good one, and she is one of many on the Madrid evening with great champions leaving their mark of talent. Leonardo Fabbri, the Italian Apollo who has redefined the morphotype of weightlifters, 2.00 meters tall and 120 kilos, with neither belly nor fat, plays on the track with the weight (7.260 kilos) as if it were a small ball, then he grabs it, sets the compass of his legs – he is the only one who plants his left foot, the first turn, in the center of the circle — and spins, and spins, as if propelled by the song of Franco Battiato, launching the steel sphere beyond the 21-meter line (21.68m). As if nothing happened. In the stands, Spanish coach Jorge Gras, who trains discus thrower Diego Casas, learns while sitting next to Paolo dal Soglio, Fabbri’s coach, and he doesn’t miss a thing. From coaches may come the revolution of throwing events, the traditional weak spot of Spanish athletics. Ona Bonet jumps 1.88m, her best mark, finishing eighth, alongside the soaring Yaroslava Mahuchikh, who reaches two meters, and both, along with her coach Tatiana Stepanova, from whom she has trained, continue learning with her coach, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. And Fátima Diame (eighth, 6.68m) battles in the long jump pit with her doubts. They defeat her, far from the greats, Malaika Mihambo (6.84m) and Larissa Iapichino May (6.92m).

Adrián Ben finishes fourth (3m 40.31s) in a slow, tactical 1500m race due to the heat, won by Portuguese runner Isaac Nader with a time of 3m 39.08s. Marta Serrano needs no references on the track. She paves her path in the 3000m steeplechase, fighting for victory until the last hurdle. She falls awkwardly. She cannot push off for the final sprint. She finishes fourth (9m 50.08s), and alive, while almost all competitors collapse to the scorching ground, on the brink of fainting and dehydration in the oppressive heat, as Christophe Ramírez, the medical officer of the championships, and his entire team quickly wrap their necks in cold scarves to lower their feverish temperatures. With this disturbing vision, at 21:10, still at 35 degrees, the 5000m competitors emerge, exhausted. Thierry Ndikumwenayo should win, starting with the best record (a magnificent 12m 47.67s), and he tries with a big change on the bell lap, but his lack of a strong finish in a slow race condemns him to third place (13m 45.38s). Close behind him, the lightning-fast Dutch runner Niels Laros (13m 44.45s), a middle-distance runner who on Thursday was one of the 13 pace-setters for Faith Kipyegon in her mile in Paris, strikes with his kick in the final curve, finishing strong as Swiss athlete Dominic Lobalu surpasses him at the line.

It approaches midnight as the podiums are set up in the center of the grass. Leonardo Fabbri, omnipotent and graceful, leads the Italian orchestra that passionately sings Fratelli d’Italia, their cheerful and lively anthem. In the stands, after the tumult is over, Spain responds with sobriety to the celebration. José Peiró, the technical director of the federation, analyzes the results seriously. “The sports evaluation cannot be good. We came here hoping to achieve a podium that we knew would be very difficult, but sixth place does not even come close to the objectives we had for this championship,” says Peiró, who generously rates the performance with a notable score, a seven out of ten. “Jaël has been wonderful, the records in the 4×100 and mixed relay have been broken. They have been absolutely stellar, yes, but in this competition, in particular, we are always a team, and we did not meet our goals as a team.”

Final Classification

1. Italy, 431.5 points. 2. Poland, 405.5. 3. Germany, 397. 4. Netherlands, 384.5. 5. Great Britain, 381. 6. Spain, 378. 7. France, 354.5. 8. Portugal, 300. 9. Sweden, 288.5. 10. Switzerland, 286. 11. Czech Republic, 283. 12. Greece, 253. 13. Hungary, 244.5. 14. Ukraine, 231. 15. Finland, 220.5. 16. Lithuania, 178.5.

The bottom three are relegated to the second division.