500 days from Paris 2024, the Higher Sports Council launches the podcast ‘Team Spain’

• With news, interviews, reports and small sound pieces related to the Spanish sport

• Its name takes it from the aid programmes ‘Team Spain Elite’ and ‘Team Spain Strategic Interest’, launched by the CSD with the aim of promoting the preparation of Olympic, Paralympic and strategic specialities athletes to improve the projection of Spanish sport in the world

• This first episode includes an interview with the Secretary of State for Sport, José Manuel Franco, who analyzes the situation of sport in our country and explains the government’s commitment to continue promoting it.

• In this episode the protagonist is also the B-Boy Xak, one of the main Spanish athletes in the discipline of breaking, which will be Olympic for the first time in Paris 2024

Madrid, March 14, 2023.- The Superior Sports Council (CSD) has released this Tuesday the first episode of the podcast ‘Team Spain’, which was born with the intention of valuing athletes, coaches, physiotherapists, psychologists, as well as the other figures that are part of the Spanish sports system. This space will include current information, interviews, reports and small sound pieces.

The name comes from the aid programs ‘Team Spain Elite’ and ‘Team Spain Strategic Interest’, which the CSD implemented last year, with the aim of promoting the conditions of preparation of Olympic, Paralympic and key specialties to favor the projection of Spanish sport in the world.

The launch of this podcast coincides with the countdown to the beginning of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, since exactly 500 days are left before the opening ceremony of the XXXIII edition, which will be held between July 26 and August 11 next year. For their part, the Paralympic Games will begin on August 28 and will last until September 8, 2024.

Interview with José Manuel Franco

José Manuel Franco, Secretary of State for Sport and President of the CSD, is the protagonist in this first episode with an interview in which he analyzes the situation of sport in Spain. “We live a kind of golden age that starts in the Olympic and Paralympic Games of Barcelona 92. Those Games marked a before and after in everything that surrounds sport and, also, in terms of social improvements, especially in terms of inclusion,” he said.

Carlos Alcaraz, Carolina Marín, Lucas Eguibar, Rafa Nadal, or Mireia Belmonte are some of the athletes highlighted as representatives of that golden age. “But we cannot stay there, we have to seek excellence, take another step,” said Franco.

In this sense, Franco explained: “The government is betting through its own funds and the European Union to improve sport more and one way to do it is also to support grassroots sport, because without it there will come a time when these generations will pass and if there is no respite there will be a certain blackout”. “Throughout the legislature EUR 1.1 billion are going to be invested. The commitment to sport is firm and determined. We want to improve the conditions of the sport because it depends on that the future is successful”, he added.

In addition, he pointed out that through the ‘Elite Team Spain’ and ‘Strategic Interest Team Spain’ programs the CSD is going to allocate 48 million euros in three years with the objective that “athletes have sufficient resources in terms of coaches, trainers, physios, facilities and travel facilities to compete in the best of conditions”.

B-Boy XAK

The B-Boy “Xak”, named Juan de la Torre, is another of the protagonists. Their sport, the breaking, will be Olympic discipline for the first time at the Paris Games. Throughout the report he tells what this means for those who practice it, as well as his experience as a high-level athlete in the High Performance Center (CAR) of Madrid. In addition, it tells what are the characteristics and specificities of a sport like yours.

As for the fact that it was decided that the breaking was Olympic, the B-Boy from Lucena (Córdoba) assures that he was not surprised. “We compete in formats that are the same. They are even more demanding, very crazy. We make a mix of many disciplines. Latin dances, circus, martial arts, gymnastics… the break absorbs everything, it’s one of the most complicated disciplines. And the fact that she is an Olympian changes everything,” he said.

Xak, who is one of the top representatives of this sport in Spain, trains between six and seven hours, six days a week, in the CAR de Madrid, where he arrived for the first time in 2021 after winning the Spanish Championship. “The first thing I found was a respect on the part of the CSD and the CAR I had never had. And this is what we have always needed: that they respect us, that they value us, that they know what we do,” he said. Now, after finishing seventh in the last World Championship, he continues to train in these facilities with a scholarship that allows him to dedicate himself completely to breaking.

The podcast includes a section called ‘Last Minute’, which serves as a closure and in which anecdotes, data or curiosities of some aspect related to athletes, competitions or sport in general will be told. This first episode explains the origin of the pets of Paris 2024, the Olympic Phryge and the Paralympic Phryge – which has a prosthesis on the right leg – represented by figures inspired by the red, cold-style hats that symbolize the French spirit of freedom and revolution.

With the launch of this podcast, the CSD continues with the promotion of initiatives focused on giving voice to all those who are part of the framework of the Spanish sports system, allowing for stories and aspects relevant to citizens, in general, and to sports fans, in particular. A line of action started last February with the publication of the first audiovisual project ‘We talk about Sport. We talk about…’, which aims to make visible realities and aspects related to sport, such as mental health, social cohesion, peace or professional careers beyond competition.

Listen to it in full at:

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