The athletes Pau Gasol, Teresa Perales and Carolina Marín have become the finalists of the Good People Awards of the COTIF international soccer tournament this Tuesday.
The prestigious jury of the award, formed among others by Vicente Del Bosque, the president of the Higher Sports Council, José Manuel Franco, or the vice president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, Ana Muñoz Merino, will decide this Thursday who relieves former referee Alberto Undiano Mallenco, who received him before the pandemic.
Pau Gasol has played eighteen seasons in the NBA, where he has been champion twice, and another 3 at FC Barcelona, and is considered the best Spanish player of all time and among the best Europeans who have played in the NBA.
He has recently been elected to the Athletes Commission of the International Olympic Committee. On October 5, 2021, he announced his retirement as a professional player and received the award of the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Sports Merit.
Teresa Perales has been recognized with the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports after 26 Paralympic medals at the Games in Sydney 2000, Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio de Janeiro 2016 and Tokyo 2020. The athlete has 22 medals and 5 world records in World Cups and has 37 medals in Europeans.
Perales has been a professor in physiotherapy and disability at the University of Zaragoza and in summer universities such as those of Teruel or Colindres, in Cantabria.
Finally, Carolina Marín, who reached number one in the world ranking of the World Badminton Federation, has been Olympic champion in Rio de Janeiro 2016, three times world champion in 2014, 2015 and 2018 and five times European champion, in 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2021.
She was awarded the Reina Sofía National Sports Award for the best Spanish athlete of the year 2014 and distinguished with the bronze medal of the Royal Order of Sports Merit. (2014) and the gold medal of the Royal Order of Sports Merit (2016).
The jury will decide on Thursday, in a ceremony that will take place in l’Alcúdia at 1 pm, the winner or final winner. Among the jury, the president of the RFEF Technical Committee of arbitrators, Carlos Velasco Carballo; journalists Alfredo Relaño, Iñaki Gabilondo and Mónica Marchante; former Atlético de Madrid soccer player Ana Rosell; the women’s coach, Jorge Vilda; former players Salvador González ‘Voro’ and Andrés Palop and former international athletes Ruth Beitia, Theresa Zabell and Anabel Medina.
