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5. Women’s team Elliot 8 and Carolina Marín: different expectations, different coverage

Tamara Echegoyen, Sofía Toro, and Ángela Pumariega, members of the women’s Match Race Team, arrived at Weymouth to participate in the 2012 London Olympic Games, as published in Marca 8 August, “under no pressure” (p. 6). Equality and the enormous competition among the crews participating in this event made the predictions about their classification unpredictable. This, together with the fact that the team was formed in May 2009 to participate in a new type of boat for the Match Race, the Elliot, as the journalist Nacho Gómez said on 12 August meant that they were “three girls that nobody recognised a few days ago” (p. 14). Hence, their news value grew as they qualified after each race.

On the contrary, the expectations on the badminton player’s Carolina Marín’s performance at the beginning of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games were high; the athlete herself stated in the Olympic Park section of the booklet in Marca 9 August before starting the competition that, “It is the tournament that I have prepared for the best; I will not win another medal that isn’t gold” (p. 11). In London 2012, she had been eliminated in the group phase after being beaten by the Chinese Li Xuerui, the gold medal winner of those Olympic Games. But on 31 August 2014, Marín beat this athlete in the individual final in the World Badminton Championships and became the first Spanish woman to win the world title and the third European player to win gold after Lene Koppen (1977) and Camilla Martin (1999). At only 21, she became the youngest European world champion. After several victories in different championships and Superseries, she became world number one in June 2015.

5.1. The “normal little girls” of Elliot 8 (Match Race)

The texts published on the first races of the women’s Elliot 8 (August 2, 5, 6, and 8), all less than half a page long, affect the results. There is a brief description of the race, indicating what the next race after winning that one would be. But there is no reference to the team’s qualities as sportswomen. Neither do the photographs offer any identifying information about the athletes: the whole scene of their boat during some part of the race. What is pointed out is that the three “continue to be the most pleasant surprise for Spain’s interests in the Weymouth racecourse” (02/08/ p.18). That is why