Bruno Hortelano has made the most auspicious of comebacks from a career threatening car accident shortly after the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and the Spaniard isn’t quite ready to hang up his racing spikes for the season.
Hortelano already held the Spanish records over 100m (10.06) and 200m (10.12) prior to this season and the 26-year-old firmly announced his return to top-level competition by smashing the long-standing Spanish record over 400m in Madrid with 44.69 - a performance which brought him into the relay set-up for the European Championships.
And exactly one month on from that performance, Hortelano revised his two-year-old Spanish 200m record with 20.04 in the semifinals of the Spanish Championships in Getafe before winning the final on the same day in 20.15. He will race again on the very same track on 29 August when he will try and revise that record again.
'He had 10 days to recover from Berlin but last Monday in Granada, we saw he was in shape so we thought it would be good to take advantage of it and look for a good mark and especially to prolong the season,” Hortelano’s representative Alberto Armas told La Vanguardia. “Next year the World Championships are in October and it's a long time.”
Hortelano will also race over 100m in Getafe - an event he hasn’t contested since the 2016 European Championships in Amsterdam when he finished fourth. Hortelano narrowly missed out on the medals in the highest quality 200m final in European Championships in Berlin, finishing fourth in 20.05 - the second fastest time of his career thus far.
The schedule for the remainder of his season hasn’t been finalised but Hortelano could also race internationally again before the end of the season with the ISTAF in Berlin on 2 September a possibility.
'I'm not coming from a gold medal to a fourth-place, I'm coming from rock bottom to fourth place. How can I be mad at that?'
— European Athletics (@EuroAthletics) August 9, 2018
A wonderfully candid interview with @BrunoHortelano after the 200m final. pic.twitter.com/jfyYd9WgXP