that immediately grabs the viewer’s attention (García 1983). As shown in Fig 2, Spanish sportswomen are the VCI in six of the booklet’s covers as they star in photographs and the main headlines in London 2012.

Men’s sports are in the spotlight of the other ten covers of the booklet: international sportswomen, therefore, do not receive the most news importance on any given day. International male athletes do so on four covers: the American swimmer Michel Phelps twice, The French swimmer Angel Lochte on one front page, and Usain Bolt in the 100m final. Spanish male athletes appear on six covers: the soccer team, the judoka Sugoi Uriarte, the tennis player Feliciano López and David Ferrer, and the basketball team three times.

In Rio 2016, the Spanish sportswomen appeared more often on the front pages, and the VCI on the cover eight times. The swimmer Mireia appeared on the cover twice, once Mireia shared it with the canoeist Maialen Chorraut, once, Lidia Valentín (bronze in weightlifting), once Carolina Marín (gold in badminton) and twice Ruth Beitia (gold in high jump) and a front-page shared among the female handball and basketball teams and beach volleyball pair Liliana Fernández and Elsa Baquerizo. Men’s sport appeared on the same number of front pages, although unlike London 2012, only once does an international male athlete appear on the front page: Usain Bolt. The other seven front pages were for Rafa Nadal (two), Nadal and Marc López, one for the canoeist Marcus Cooper, one for Saúl Craviotto, and Cristian Toro from K2 200 and one for Saúl Craviotto. Just like in London 2012, international sportswomen do not earn the spotlight on the front page of the booklet of Marca in Rio 2016.

Fig 2: VCI of the front pages of the booklet

Source: created by the author

Therefore, we can observe that in the coverage of men’s sport, the sportsman’s nationality does not matter as much as his appeal to the audience because of his sporting career (Usain Bolt and Michel Phelps) and his performance in this Olympic event. It is not the case in women’s sport: they are the only ones who make the front page because they