Miguelina Cobián Hechavarría

Cuban athlete in the specialty of Track and Field. Known as the Eastern Gazelle. Selected on repeated occasions among the best athletes of Cuba and Latin America. Graduated as a Physical Education teacher and holds a degree in Physical Culture. She participated as a member of the national team for nine years, becoming champion of the Pan American Games and Central American and Caribbean Games. She specialized in the 4x100 m race in which she became Olympic silver medalist in 1968.

Miguelina was selected to begin sports training in Santiago de Cuba at age 18 by Czech runner Emil Zatopek, who trained her on the grounds of the Coliseo of the Sports City.

Her first competition was in the relay carnival in Holguín in 1960. She stood out as one of the best Cuban sprinters in Central America, the Caribbean and Ibero-America that year. She subsequently continued developing as a runner and ranked among the 20 best sprinters in the world; for eight years, from 1963 to 1970. She made her international debut at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Kingston 1962, where she won a gold medal in 100 m and silver in the 4x100.

She was the first Cuban athlete to reach an Olympic final, fifth in 100 m in Tokyo 1964 and eighth in Mexico 1968. She was part of the 4 x 100 relay team that won the silver medal at the XIX Olympic Games Mexico 1968.

Before that feat in 1968, Cobián had become the fifth fastest runner on the planet when in the final of the 100 meters at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo she stopped the stopwatches at 11 seconds and 72 hundredths. Later in 1968 she finished eighth with a time of 11.61.

It was thus that by 1970 the Antillean gazelle had earned no less than 25 gold medals in 27 international competitions, in the aforementioned three distances, with only two fourth place finishes at the Universiade in Turin, Italy. She left a clear history, filled with triumphs, during her lifetime.

She is the second Cuban and continental athlete with the most medals in regional games with fourteen trophies, eight in Central American and Caribbean Games and six in Pan American Games.

The only sprinter in the region to win three consecutive gold medals in a speed event at the Central American and Caribbean Games.

In 1970 in Panama City she held her last competition, as she suffered an injury that prevented her from participating in the Pan American Games in Cali 1971 and the Olympic Games in Munich 1972. For this reason, the Eastern Gazelle decided to retire from the track.

Her career trajectory positioned her, in her time, as the fifth fastest woman in the world, a distinction she validated when on three consecutive occasions she won gold in the 100 meters at the Central American and Caribbean Games. Since 1964 she was already considered the queen of speed in international competitions held in Cuba.

Miguelina Cobián leaves an everlasting legacy, for her outstanding performances in the 60s and 70s of the last century, a time when short distance runners shone in our country.

After her retirement, she worked as a coach for school and youth athletes at the Schools of Sports Initiation and the Superior School of Athletic Excellence until her retirement.

On the occasion of the XIV Central American and Caribbean Games, which took place in Havana in 1982, she was selected to be part of the Honor Committee of that competition.

In November 2005, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Central American and Caribbean Confederation. She was 78 years old when she passed away.