Gold and two bronzes for Cuba at the youth athletics world championship

August 21, 2021

The Cuban shot putter Juan Carley Vázquez needed to reach the sixth and final attempt to win a much-savored gold medal. Until that moment he was only two centimeters behind Belarusian Yauheni Bryhi, a man who improved his personal record by 40 centimeters and had commanded the competition from the first throw with 19.70 m. However, in the final attempt the Caribbean athlete's shot landed at 19.73 m.

Before that moment our athlete was in second place, following a sequence of 19.47 m, 19.68 m, 18.92 m, 18.85 m and a no throw. However, in his sixth attempt at the circle he managed to surpass his rival and give Cuba its first world medal in its history in men's shot put.

Swiss athlete Jephté Vogel took bronze, far from the fight for first place with a best mark of 19.16 m.

Meanwhile, Yiselena Ballar fulfilled her medal expectations and won bronze in javelin throw. The Cuban achieved a mark of 55.48 m during her fifth attempt to finish behind Serbian Adriana Vilagos, the year's leader with her mark of 61.46 m. Greek Elina Tzengko (59.60 m), holder of the best mark among juniors, took silver.

Although Yiselena arrived here with a season's mark exceeding 60 meters, she was unable to match it now. In a competition stopped for an hour due to a heavy storm over the Nairobi stadium, she had other throws of 54.54 m, 48.51 m, 55.13 m, 53.44 m and 51.77 m. Since the junior world title won by Odisleydis Menéndez in 1998 Cuba had not won a medal in this event.

For his part, another pleasant surprise of the day for Cuba was the also bronze-medalist Shainer Rengifo, owner of a time of 10.32 s in the 100 meters to give the Island a medal that was not in the plans.

After advancing to this final with his personal mark of 10.29 s, once again the Caribbean athlete ran in good form and only finished behind Letsile Tebogo (BOT-10.19 s) and South African Benjamin Richardson (10.28 s). In that race the Cuban knew how to capitalize on the second best start among the eight finalists.

In all the history of junior athletics world championships, this is also Cuba's first medal in the 100 meters.

The Caribbean performance on this second date was completed by 800-meter runner Daily Cooper, disqualified in the first round. The Cuban entered second in her heat with an acceptable time of 2:09.06, but then the judges reviewed the race and detected a lane violation.