Maria Perez celebrates with her 20km walk Olympic silver medal on the podium at the Stade de France on Friday. | Andrej Isakovic / AFP via Getty Images

A gap of just eight seconds kept Maria Perez out of the medals at the Olympics three years ago, in the gruelling heat of Sapporo.

But in Paris, she got her podium spot, taking 20km walk silver behind China’s Yang Jiayu in a season’s best time.

Although Perez came into the Games as the favorite, having won gold at last year’s World Athletics Championships in Budapest, there was no sense of disappointment. Having recently come through painful surgery to repair a sacral nerve, her participation had at one stage been in doubt.

The Spanish press had pictures of her all over their front pages Friday. Most papers chose an image of the 28-year-old being lifted up under the Eiffel Tower by Alvaro Martin, who won bronze in the men’s equivalent.

However, if anyone can be said to have swept Perez off her feet, it is her wife Noe Morillas, a DJ whom she married in a beautiful wedding in Granada in September 2022.

The couple made the decision to wed after Noe was diagnosed with cancer. “We got together a lot of people,” Perez is quoted as saying in El Mundo. “Thank God she is doing very well now. With all this, I have learned to value life more.”

Morillas was in Hungary last August to greet the newly-crowned world champion with a kiss. Four days later, Perez was picking up a second world title, recording victory in the 35km walk.

Similarly in Paris, she has another medal shot. The Games’ inaugural mixed marathon walk relay will be held Wednesday, 

Perez wrote of her silver medal on Instagram: “This has been the reward to an incredibly difficult year. I want to thank everyone who has supported me in the process, from the first to the last moment, because without all those people, it wouldn’t have been possible to be here.”

She had to wait for the medal presentation, which took place in front of a huge crowd during the first day of track and field competition in the Stade de France.

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“How beautiful is an Olympic medal, how beautiful it is to celebrate it in a packed stadium and how beautiful it is with your people,” she added.

“To all who have shown me love since Thursday: THANK YOU. It’s becoming impossible to reply to all of you and my phone is on fire.

“But I’m really telling you that I thank you from the bottom of my heart! And now to prepare for Wednesday…”

The profile of Perez in El Mundo refers to a podcast episode during which she said she has never hidden being a lesbian.

“We are people and, in the end, it doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman, you fall in love with the person,” she told the host.

“I haven’t had any problems. I have my private life, which I have tried to keep as private as possible, but when I felt like it, I have told it.”

Her visibility and representation is hugely important to the LGBTQ community in Spain. They will hope to have another Perez medal to celebrate in midweek.