SUMMER GAMES SPOTLIGHT : BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 15 : SHE STRIKES A BLOW FOR BARCELONA

Among the athletic success stories at the Games, none is more dramatic than Spain’s. In the first 96 years of the modern Olympics, Spanish athletes won 26 medals, five of them at Seoul in 1988.

This year, with a home-field advantage and after four years of heavy state investment in Spanish athletes, optimists guessed that Spain might win a dozen medals. One big appliance store offered to give customers their money back for merchandise bought in June if Spain won 10 medals.

With four more falling Saturday, Spain has won 20 medals in Barcelona--13 of them gold--in sports as diverse as yachting, archery, the pole vault, tennis, boxing and soccer.

The most surprising gold medal came Friday with a 2-1 upset of favored Germany in women’s field hockey. The winning goal was scored by Eli Maragall, niece of Pasqual Maragall, the mayor of Barcelona and president of the Barcelona Olympic Coordinating Committee that has staged these Games.

* This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and Baltimore Sun, all Times-Mirror newspapers.