Yarisley Silva, story of a champion

September 17, 2019

Yipsi Moreno, head of the Athletics Commission in Cuba, assures that Yarisley Silva will win a medal at the World Athletics Championship: "Even though we look at the ranking objectively and it doesn't seem that way, we made the same prediction for Lima and many people didn't understand why we maintained that gold forecast. Well, it's because athletes of Yarisley's caliber show their mettle in the crucial moment and win.

"It doesn't matter that she finished eighth with 4.63 in Brussels now. Let's wait and see. Nobody knows. Let's remember that she was third in London 2017, the only medal for the Cuban delegation."

Yipsi's opinion —as accurate in words as in throwing— about Silva couldn't be different, since the small dark-haired girl has managed to win the admiration of the people. But those guts took years to develop, and here goes the story of Yarisley.

Before becoming an athlete, she wanted to be a dancer. Then she tried to run fast and throw the javelin, and attempted high jump and long jump, but didn't succeed at those either. At age 13, she discovered the pole vault and immediately fell in love with it.

Later came the pros and cons at the pinareña EIDE "Ormani Arenado," due to her short stature. Thanks to the long sight of her aunt María Caridad, she tried her luck in Havana.

At a National School Games held in Santiago de Cuba, she caught the attention of Alexander Navas. He discovered her, trained her, urged her to "jump" a lot and made her great. Navas is her current coach and confesses to never having seen such progress in the world of pole vaulting.

Today, she continues among our best athletes. She dominates magazine headlines and her followers on social networks are considerable. She is a media personality on a global scale. If the Panamericano Stadium in Havana could speak, it could testify to the vicissitudes of a life dedicated to sports daily.

Olympic silver medalist and world champion, she still maintains the simplicity and naturalness characteristic of the beginning of her career, values that together with her talent place her among other legends of Cuban sports such as Stevenson, Juantorena, Sotomayor, Ana Fidelia, or Mijaín.

Daughter of Magalys and Jesús, two humble vueltabajeros, she climbed to the top by a narrow path, but full of virtue.

After spending 15 years with poles, Yarita, as family and friends call her, won the Beijing World Championship in 2015. The 4.90 m mark at that time showed great progress compared to the 4.15 m at the Olympics held in that same city seven years earlier.

Days after winning the title in the Chinese capital, she achieved her personal best of 4.91 m during the 17th International Meet of the specialty, organized by Beckum, Germany. Thus, she became the third woman with the highest mark in outdoor championships, surpassed only by Russian Elena Isinbayeva (5.06) and American Jennifer Suhr (4.92).

The series of winning jumps achieved that season demonstrated her athletic prowess; Silva has the gift to win decisive events.

That's what her aunt María Caridad taught her: not to tire and to be competitive. She confesses that at the moment of golden jumps, she thinks of nothing but technique, the people who love her, and the hardships she endured as a teenager when she had to train on sawdust for lack of a good mat.

She always follows a concentration ritual: speaking softly, almost through her teeth, and thus encouraging herself. She knows that from a distance, millions of Cubans support her.

In that magical moment she is aware that in her home, in the Hermanos Cruz neighborhood of the Pinar city, family, neighbors, INDER officials, and even the press, don't leave their seats and shout euphorically when, finally, she takes hold and rises.

She still preserves her first pole, keeping it in a special corner as if to treasure part of her history. It's very different from the current one, made for grand venues like the legendary Bird's Nest in China.

Sports runs through her veins, since her mother also practiced athletics in the shot put and javelin throwing events. Thus, up close, came advice about willpower, determination, and perseverance, vital in a discipline like pole vaulting.

She's an ordinary girl. She loves playing with her dogs Yaco and Canelo, usually helps with household chores, participates in neighborhood activities, and goes out at night.

She adores dancing. She likes being surrounded by children who ask her for autographs so she can take the opportunity to give them advice from someone who —as she says— was that age, dreamed far away, and never stopped believing in fantasies.

As an athlete, she defies gravity with each trip to the track, accustomed to embracing the sky with her glory, and desires to reach even higher. Flying above five meters is not an obsession; she achieved it in July 2015 while training in Spain. Now she'll try to do it under greater pressure, in full competition.

Although she finished seventh in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, after a difficult season due to her boyfriend's accident at the time, the pinareña dressed in gold at the Central American Games in Barranquilla (2018) and —with a very timely and spectacular 4.75 m on the last attempt— triumphed at the Pan American Games in Lima last August.

Three-time continental champion, Yarita has ambitions for the universal competition in Doha: "I would like to be crowned world champion again. God is the one who has control and who gives the victory," she declared via Facebook.

She worries about rivals like Greek Ekaterini Stefanidi, Americans Sandi Morris and Katie Nageotte, Canadian Alysha Newman, Russian Anzhelika Sidorova, and Venezuelan Robeilys Peinado. She knows that her competitors will arrive at the Qatari capital with the momentum of two years of preparation, so the fight for medals doesn't look easy.

Nevertheless, with her bearing of an undisputed warrior, Yarisley will surely put on a good show. Taking the sky by storm won't be difficult for her, and the sky, by the way, due to the magnetic attraction exerted by the Cuban, will try to pull her when she jumps in Doha, just as it did with her idol Sergei Bubka in Seoul, 1988.