As the Mediterranean country’s most decorated Paralympian, Teresa Perales captured much more than a spot on the podium on Saturday when she claimed the 28th medal for her already pristine resumé after whiffing in her first attempt in Paris on Thursday: the 100m backstroke was not kind to her quest, but when it came time for the 50m backstroke, her go-to race, she did not let the chance go by.

In the morning qualifiers, she had posted only the sixth best time, yet her team did not lose confidence. “If anyone can do magic, it is Teresa”, trainer Darío Carreras warned local newspaper MARCA. Perales, who won the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports in 2021, entered the podium with a time of 1min 10sec 95, behind Singapore's Pin Xiu Yip and Mexico's Haidee Viviana Aceves.

Reaching the Paris Games was already quite the feat for the 48-year-old athlete from Zaragoza after she had to learn to swim with only one arm as her disability worsened and caused her to lose mobility in her left arm due to spasms in the lead-up to the Olympics.

At the age of 19, a neuropathy already claimed the mobility of both her legs and from then on she found her passion in swimming, becoming an icon of the international Paralympic movement with her impressive track record in competitions. Phelps, the former champion, also has 28 medals in total: his 23 gold medals are more than double the count of his nearest Olympic rivals.

This medal “has a lot of history behind it, a lot of effort”, she told journalists after her third-place finish and just having greeted by Spain’s Queen Letizia, who witnessed the feat. “It goes for all those who are left at the gates and for all of us who keep hoping until the end,” she added.

Although she won a silver medal in the 50m backstroke at Tokyo 2020 with her current injury, which causes a shoulder dislocation, the problem continued to worsen until he was unable to use that arm for swimming. She now wears a black splint on her left hand with inscriptions of all the editions of the Games in which she has competed: from Sydney 2000 to Paris 2024.

Despite her struggles, Carreras underlined that she never complained while Xavi Torres, another Spanish para swimming legend with 16 medals, also praised her fighting spirit. “Only Teresa can do this. I emphasise her perseverance and her ability to adapt to new situations. The swimmer of Tokyo three years ago and now is very different but she is still among the best and that is already worthy of a medal,” he told MARCA.

It was a very close final and, from the get-go, it was clear that she could fight for the podium, sometimes edging on the third spot, others trailing no further than fourth. The bronze was decided in the last metres by two hundredths of a second. Teresa's time was 1:10.95, Italy's Angela Procida's 1:10.97. The gold was clear from the start, however, with Singapore's Pin Xiu Yip setting a frantic pace (1:05.99) and Mexico's Haidee Viviana Aceves Perez, taking silver (1:08.96).

“This tastes like a world record to me,” she said. “I didn't care about the colour, I wanted the 28. It's the most epic of my career because of everything behind it. I've had to reinvent myself and this is a reminder that we are all survivors and we can do it,” Perales concluded.

Perales' 28th medal makes her one of the winningest athletes in Paralympic Games history, alongside American swimmer Trischa Zorn, with 55 medals; Swedish athlete, cyclist and skier Heinz Frei, with 35 medals between Winter and Summer Paralympic Games; Israel's Zipora Rubin-Rosenbaum, who totalled 31 between athletics, swimming, table tennis and wheelchair basketball; Sweden's shooter Jonas Jacobsson, with 30; and fellow US swimmer Jessica Long (29 medals, although Long can still add to that tally because she is still competing in Paris).