In sports, whenever there is success, failure or goodbye, the fan and the expert unconsciously look to the future. If a tennis player wins a Grand Slam we wonder how many more he will lift. Will Carlos Alcaraz, who accumulates a big one, be able to match Rafa Nadal’s 22? If a team stumbles in a championship, the only thing that comes to mind is what the future offers to solve it. Will Spain have a squad with enough talent to compete in the next European Football Championship? If a historic pilot decides to retire, all the spotlights will move towards the best Spaniard in that sport. Can Carlos Sainz win the Formula 1 World Championship?
Jon Rahm’s victory at the Augusta Masters is the latest example of how well Spanish sport responds to almost all the questions put to it. “Will Seve Ballesteros have an heir?” First it was Olazábal, then Sergio García and now, with more reason than any of his compatriots, Rahm, number one in the world and the first European to win the US Open and Augusta, has written the future of Spanish golf.
At 28, an age that still offers him several decades of golf at the highest level, Barrika’s is one of the pillars of the next generation of Spanish sport. A generation settled in the elite, capable of winning despite his youth and causing fans almost the same butterflies as his legitimate legends. The era of Nadal, Iniesta, Gasol, Alonso or Contador is fading, an era that has seen the greatest achievements of Spanish sport, but another one that promises as many successes as the previous one has emerged, perhaps when Spain was asking more questions. The challenge is great, but so is the talent.
Next to Rahm appears, logically, Carlos Alcaraz. From number one in golf to number one (now two) in world tennis. At 19 years old, the Murcian has already reached the top of the ATP ranking and was crowned at the last US Open. The comparisons with Nadal are as exaggerated as they are inevitable. The man from Manacor also lifted his first Grand Slam at the age of 19. In his 20th season, the same one that Alcaraz now faces, he repeated the title in Paris and fell in the Wimbledon final with Federer, a title and a runner-up that Alcaraz dreams of.
If there is someone who has had the target over his head for many years, it is Carlos Sainz Jr. By name, by surname and for competing in the same sport as Fernando Alonso. The man from Madrid has been labeled the heir to the Spanish engine for five years on his shoulders, and now, sitting in a Ferrari, the chances of seeing him win are greater than ever. He is 28 years old in a sport that he is seeing as Alonso ‘hard’ after 40, so he has years to fight a World Cup in which he has only achieved one victory so far, last year at Silverstone. He lacks a car.
For football, more than one name would have to be used, but Pedri is the beacon of a generation forced to put themselves in the boots of the best squad Spanish football has ever seen, the one capable of winning two Euros and a World Cup. The Spain of Pedri, Gavi or Rodri reached the semifinals of the last Euro Cup, and despite the doubts for the first weeks with Luis de la Fuente in command, has in Pedri the eighth footballer with the highest market value in the world (100 million euros). euro).
As difficult as replacing Nadal or Alonso is doing it with the Gasol brothers. The same year that Pau saw the Lakers retire his number ’16’, Santi Aldama completed a great season as a starter for the Grizzlies, the second best team in the NBA’s Western Conference and a franchise that knows the players very well. Gasol. At 22 years old, the future of Spanish basketball bears the name of the canary.
Back on the asphalt, and in the middle of a cycle that vibrates with Pogacar, Van der Poel and Van Aert, Juan Ayuso is the great national hope. At only 20 years old, he was third in the last Tour of Spain and appears as one of the favorites to win this year’s edition.
Together with them, the athlete Asier Martínez (22 years old), bronze in 110 meter hurdles in the last World Cups and gold in the last European; or the 18-year-old pilot Pedro Acosta, Moto3 world champion in 2021 and third in the Moto2 world championship that is taking place this season. The shadow of Marc Márquez is long, but what question has Spanish sport not left unanswered?
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