their news importance grew as they qualified after each race. It is not until 9 August, already qualified for the semi-final, when a full shot is published with a Portuguese sailor friend. Tamara Echegoyen provides some of the keys to her team’s success: her calmness and speed in the stern. On 10 August, Marca dedicates a full page to the multidiscipline sailing team. The report describes the sailing team’s village and the sportsmen and women’s daily life in it as women became references in an elite sport in 2012. The report shows the motivational phrases and large photographs of some national and international sports idols –Pau Gasol, Rafa Nadal, Miguel Indurain, Alberto Contador, Usain Bolt, or Mohammed Alí–. There are no photos of sportswomen in the team’s village. On 11 August, once Elliot’s women’s team reached the final, the newspaper dedicates a page and a half to them. Still, the three athletes do not take up the photographs and information. The boat (Elliot) and the song they motivate themselves with at the start of every day at the Olympic Games take up the information, even though it had already appeared in the newspaper the day before.

The ghost ship

Match Race. Tamara Echegoyen, Sofía Toro, and Ángela Pumariega place Spain in the final of the newest and ethereal sailing competition class. The Elliot 6 m is born and dies in the 2010 Games.

The crazy pod’s secret

A video of Van Damme with a reggaeton music base motivates our medalists daily.

Only a few lines about their performance in two of the inside covers are provided about the sportswomen. The text refers to how amazed Sofía Toro, a supporter of Déport, was when a player of that club, Juan Carlos Valerón, called her; and he congratulated her and her teammates on their performance: “Both Sofía and her teammates Tamara Echegoyen and Ángela Pumairega are going to have to get used to having similar experiences [referring to Valerón’s congratulations] or much better ones from now on because yesterday they got into the Olympic Games final,” the journalist wrote (11/08 p. 18).

As gold medal winners, Marca notably increased the space dedicated to Tamara Echegoyen, Sofía Toro, and Ángela Pumariega Marca to 3 pages. Still, again, they do not directly appear in the headlines: “The plastic boat turned into gold” (p. 12), “Defying physics” (p. 13), and “The lucky cap” (p. 14). They only manage to do so in Nacho Gómez’s profile about them on the last page with the headline: “Normal little girls.” The three athletes are in the spotlight in the images: in one shot, they are on the podium with their medals; in another, they are racing in the regatta, but the women themselves are the centre of visual attention in the image, not the boat, and there is a third medium shot of the three celebrating their victory in the Olympic final.

Every day they compete, the news’s daily headlines refer to them either by their surnames and the country they represent (“Spain is one win away from the semi-finals” 8/08 p. 6). They are also referred to as the girls from match race instead of identifying them as “the women’s match race team.” The sports discipline is included in the news in the London 2012 Sailing with “Match Race. Even though there is no Spanish men’s team in this sport, if the adjective “female” were