Belmonte Is In The Water At Spanish Olympic Qualifying Meet

2020 OPEN CASTALIA CASTELLÓN TROPHY

• Saturday, December 5th & Sunday, December 6th
• Castellón Municipal Olympic Pool, Castellón, Spain
• LCM (50m)
• Olympic-qualifying event
• Invited Entries
• SwimSwam Preview
• RFEN 2020 Olympic Games Selection Criteria
• Live Results

The 2020 Open Castalia Castellón Trophy kicked off this morning, with some of Spain’s best seeking Olympic roster spots for the postponed 2020 Tokyo Games.

Among the contenders is 30-year-old Mireia Belmonte, the most successful Spanish swimmer ever. Belmonte was due to be a member of Team Iron during season 2 of the International Swimming League (ISL), however, the Spaniard never made an appearance in Budapest.

It’s encouraging, then to see the 200m fly Olympic champion back in the water here in her native Spain, today contesting the 400m free.

In the heats, Belmonte claimed the 2nd seed with a time of 4:15.03, sitting behind the fastest swimmer of the morning, Paula Juste Sanchez. Sanchez posted a mark of 4:14.84 to land lane 4, with both women striving to dip beneath the 4:07.90 RFEN-dictated qualification time for Tokyo.

Already beating the QT in the women’s 200m breaststroke heats was national record holder Jessica Vall. Vall posted a time of 2:25.28 to edge out Marina Garcia‘s time of 2:25.82 to claim the top seed. Although Vall snagged a QT in the prelims, she’ll need to at least repeat the effort in the night finals to make it count towards selection.

That’s the same scenario for the 400m IM top-seeded swimmer Joan Pons. The 23-year-old punched a mark of 4:15.55 to easily set himself apart from the rest of the field en route to getting under the 4:15.84 QT. He’ll need to put up another strong performance this evening to solidify his selection to the Olympic Games roster.

Spanish Olympic-qualifying times;