LaLiga's other Olympians

Today sees the 2016 Olympic Games officially get underway in Rio, where seven medal hopefuls will be flying the flag for their LaLiga sides in the men's football tournament and a further three players from the Women's First Division will be going for gold. However, the involvement of LaLiga clubs in Rio extends far beyond the direct participation of their footballers.

A number of LaLiga Santander and LaLiga 1|2|3 clubs will be present in Rio in sports other than football, in some instances as athlete sponsors and in others through players who belong to their other sports teams.

Villarreal CF will be represented in Rio across a spate of sports, including athletics, beach volleyball and tennis. Amongst the participants who are sponsored by the Castellon outfit are tennis ace, Roberto Bautista Agut, beach volleyball's Pablo Herrera (a silver medallist at the Athens 2004 Olympics) and the following 12 members of Spain's athletics squad: Bruno Hortelano (200m), Pablo Torrijos (triple jump), Daniel Andujar (800m), Francisco Arcilla (50km walk), Frank Casañas (discus), Javier Cienfuegos (hammer), Yidiel Contreras (110m hurdles), Alvaro Martin (20km walk), Lois Maikel Martinez (discus), Concha Montaner (long jump), Patricia Sarrapio (triple jump), Julia Takacs (20km walk), as well as Antoine Gakeme who will represent Burundi, Botswana's Onkabetse Nkobolo and Poland's Konrad Bukowiecki.

Villarreal have really gone all out in support of their Olympians and just a few short days ago the club bid farewell to their Rio-bound athletes in a ceremony attended by club president Fernando Roig and first-team player, Denis Cheryshev. The event saw the medal hopefuls presented with Villarreal shirts with their names on, as Roig commented that: "At Villarreal we're focused first and foremost on our football, but a portion of our finances is put aside for many other sports."

UCAM Murcia will be even more broadly represented at Rio 2016. Besides having their own professional football and basketball teams, the university sponsors some of the leading figures in the Spanish sporting world, among them a large number who will be serious medal contenders in Brazil. Mireia Belmonte, Ruth Beitia, Alejandro Valverde, Carolina Marin, Eva Calvo, Miguel Angel Lopez, Joel Gonzalez, Lidia Valentin, Maialen Chourraut, Mario Mola, Saul Craviotto and Teresa Portela are just some of the names that fall into this category. 

The UCAM roster includes a host of Olympic and world champions and medallists who will be gunning for more success on the big stage. In total, no fewer than 55 UCAM athletes will be competing in Rio in disciplines as diverse as track and field, swimming, field hockey, table tennis, cycling, weightlifting and sailing, to name but a selection. 

FC Barcelona also boast a sizeable contingent in Rio. Besides the Brazilian footballing trio made up of Neymar, Rafinha and Andressa Alves, stars will be flying the flag for the Catalan giants in basketball (Juan Carlos Navarro, Victor Claver and Shane Lawal), athletics (Ilias Fifa, Jose Ignacio Diaz, Carlos Tobalina, Jean Marie Okutu, Caridad Jerez, Raquel Gonzalez and Sabina Asenjo), rugby sevens (Juan Losada and Pol Pla) and handball (Wael Jallouz, Kamil Syprzak, Jesper Noddesbo, Cedric Sorhaindo and Timothey N'Guessan).

FC Barcelona to have 21 representatives at Rio Olympic Games: https://t.co/1GnhqhIRIl pic.twitter.com/S2JfiEJZFz

— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) August 2, 2016

 Real Madrid, meanwhile, have supplied three members of Spain's basketball squad in Rio (Felipe Reyes, Rudy Fernandez and Sergio Llull), while Real Sociedad will also be present at the Games in the shape of Maria Lopez de Eguilaz Zubiria, the goalkeeper for the Spanish women's field hockey team.