By Alessandro
Carlos Sastre of Spain won the Tour de France and in case you missed it, Spain’s fury is being felt on the professional sports landscape. Consider they’re currently the Euro Cup holders in soccer, World Champions in basketball and Rafael Nadal is poised to become the number one ranked tennis player in the world.
Now granted, in the case of Sastre, the UCI Road rankings are not led by a Spaniard, or the Euro triumph isn’t the same as the World Cup. Nevertheless, it doesn’t detract from the fact that Spain is basically kicking asssss these days.
It hasn’t always been that way. Growing up it was always the same countries who dominated in a multitude of sports. That is, European sports powers like Russia, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden and Great Britain. Spain? Have you looked at their overall Olympic medal count? Go. It’s not pretty.
Spain back then was not the Spain of today. There was no economic miracle in the post-war era like the ones in Italy and Germany for Spain. Nope. It remained, for all intents and purposes, poor.
However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. La Liga has always been a competitive soccer league and Spain’s Eurobasket successes are well known. Its cycling and tennis exploits kept it among the elite nations and more recently Spanish talent has graced the motorsports (especially motorbiking) world – though not on the manufacturing side.
I don’t know what accounts for this impressive run. I suspect Spain’s entry into the EU back in 1986 had a lot to do with it. Its rising economy (largely driven by a construction boom) has drastically curtailed unemployment, tourism has been properly organized and while fierce regionalism still exists, the country seems to have figured out how to stand together and rise from its past dictatorship. Just don’t email this piece to ETA…please.
The Roman Empire used to draw much of its talent from Spain and I suppose no one should be surprised that in the post-Franco era Spain has reinvented and reinvigorated itself early in the 21st century.
By geographic extension, these are great days for Mediterranean nations in general. Italy continues to produce and manufacture masterful racing bikes, cars and motorbikes on a scale that not even France can match. They also are the reigning World Cup champions while Valentino Rossi continues to rip apart the MotoGP. France for its part were in the finals at the World Cup and always have world class athletes. Greece (the previous Euro champions in 2004) continues to develop its successful basketball program and were finalists at the World Basketball championships bowing to, yup, Spain.
