Melanie Costa made a little bit of history with her silver medal in the women’s 400-meter freestyle on Sunday \u2014 and the Spaniard didn’t even know it.<\/p>\n
By finishing second behind runaway winner Katie Ledecky at the raucous Palau Sant Jordi pavilion on Sunday, Costa became the first woman born in Spain to win a medal at a long-course swimming world championships.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t even know that. I am surprised, but now I am even happier,” Costa said with a look of disbelief after asking if two-time Olympic silver medalist Mireia Belmonte had won one.<\/p>\n
Belmonte, the host nation’s great medal hope, hasn’t yet. She missed qualifying with the ninth-best time in morning heats, falling short of reaching the field-of-eight final. Belmonte will race in another five events.<\/p>\n
Spain has won one previous medal in a women’s race. That was Nina Zhivanevskaya, a nationalized Russian who captured gold in the 50 backstroke at the 2003 worlds in Barcelona.<\/p>\n
“I always wanted to be at the top,” said Costa. “I knew that this could be my time. I’m in the best moment of my career, a silver medal says that I’m among the elite. I’m going to move forward to the next competition with a lot of confidence.”<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old Costa is from the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, home to perhaps Spain’s biggest sports star of all, tennis star Rafael Nadal.<\/p>\n
While Nadal will still be king for some time to come, Costa has also earned her moment in the spotlight. Newspaper El Mundo splashed on its website: “Costa, Surprise Silver,” and Publico gushed: “Melanie Costa achieves historic silver.”<\/p>\n
Grabbed by Spanish national television after she had been draped with her medal, Costa was speechless.<\/p>\n
“To win the silver medal and do it at home, I’m just so happy,” she said.<\/p>\n
Costa’s day started in spectacular fashion and kept getting better as she lowered her personal best by four seconds.<\/p>\n
By qualifying with the second-best mark behind Ledecky in the morning heats, Costa set a Spanish national record of 4:04.20. She then lowered that mark by 1.93 seconds in the final.<\/p>\n
A year ago, Costa failed to make the final in the 400 free at the London Olympics. She won gold in this event last year at the short-course worlds in Istanbul, but finished eighth in the 2011 long-course worlds in Shanghai.<\/p>\n
Ledecky’s victory was never in doubt after taking a huge lead. Yet Costa slotted in beside the American and used that to her advantage.<\/p>\n
“I knew that Ledecky was going to go out at full speed, and after this morning I saw myself with the strength necessary to follow her for the first 200 meters,” Costa said. “And that’s what I did. I grabbed onto her and didn’t let her go until she could keep going and I couldn’t.<\/p>\n
“To swim 4:20 is incredible. It makes everything worth it. This erases all the rest.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Melanie Costa made a little bit of history with her silver medal in the women’s 400-meter freestyle on Sunday \u2014 and the Spaniard didn’t even know it.<\/p>\n
By finishing second behind runaway winner Katie Ledecky at the raucous Palau Sant Jordi pavilion on Sunday, Costa became the first woman born in Spain to win a medal at a long-course swimming world championships.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t even know that. I am surprised, but now I am even happier,” Costa said with a look of disbelief after asking if two-time Olympic silver medalist Mireia Belmonte had won one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}