The unattainable strides of Dominican Marileidy Paulino on the track at the Stade de France; the backflip of Argentine rider José Torres in front of the Concorde obelisk; the tears of Ecuadorian race walker Daniel Pintado at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, the farewell of Cuban wrestler Mijaín López after his fifth consecutive gold in Champs de Mars and the bow of star Simone Biles to her Brazilian winner Rebeca Andrade at Bercy, will be some of the indelible marks that Latin American sport will leave in Paris 2024.
The magnificent settings of the City of Light also witnessed the return to the podium of Peru, Panama, Guatemala and Chile and unprecedented triumphs by women in the first Olympic Games with gender parity, as well as the decline of Cuba as a regional power and empty hands of gold for Mexico and Colombia.
ETERNAL GLORY
Paulino broke a 28-year-old Olympic record in the 400-meter freestyle and became the first woman from the Dominican Republic to win an Olympic title.
The 27-year-old sprinter clocked 48.17 seconds on the purple track at the Stade de France, shaving eight hundredths off the Olympic record that had been held by Frenchwoman Marie-José Pérec since Atlanta 1996.
“Maligno” Torres, who left football for the “adrenaline” he felt when he got on a BMX bike, put everything he had into the first round of the freestyle final and earned an unbeatable score for his competitors, which earned him Argentina’s only gold medal in Paris.
Ecuadorian Pintado took gold in the 20-kilometer race walk and then, together with Glenda Morejón, also won silver in the mixed relay event.
Andrade also became the first gymnast to defeat Biles in a floor final at a major international competition. With her six-medal haul, the athlete surpassed sailors Robert Scheidt and Torben Grael to take the lead in Brazil’s Olympic titles at the Games.
END OF DROUGHT
Alongside Paulino, shooters Francisca Crovetto (Chile) and Adriana Ruano (Guatemala) and boxer Atheyna Bylon (Panama) also broke down the last dividing wall with their male colleagues and brought a smile back to their countries after a long period without Olympic achievements.
Crovetto was crowned Olympic champion in the women’s skeet event, which catapulted her as the first woman to win a gold medal for Chile. The last time an athlete from the Andean country had stood on the top step of the podium was in Athens 2004.
Guatemala celebrated its gold thanks to Ruano, whose career as a gymnast was cut short in 2011 by a serious spinal injury. Thirteen years later, she competed as a shooter and captured Guatemala’s first ever Olympic gold in the women’s trap.
Bylon also became the Central American nation’s first female Olympic medalist with her silver medal in the lightweight category.
It wasn’t gold, but the bronzes won by Ecuadorian Neisi Dajomes in weightlifting and Puerto Rican Jasmine Camacho-Quinn also made it into the Olympic history books.
Dajomes became Ecuador’s first double medalist after finishing with a total of 267 kilograms, which also allowed her to climb to third place in Tokyo.
With third place in the 100-meter hurdles, Camacho-Quinn became the first Puerto Rican athlete of either sex to win two Olympic medals, after winning gold four years ago.
Meanwhile, sailing brought Peru back to the Olympic podium after 32 years thanks to Stefano Peschiera’s bronze in the dinghy event.
THE RECORD-BREAKING FIGHTER
Mijaín López, the Cuban legend of Greco-Roman wrestling, became the first athlete in history to win five gold medals in five consecutive Olympic Games in the same individual event.
A few days after turning 42, “Terrible” López won the 130-kilogram final. He had also been champion in Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio de Janeiro 2016 and Tokyo 2020.
With his fifth Olympic title, the Cuban gladiator surpassed other legends of the sport such as Americans Michael Phelps (swimming), Carl Lewis (long jump) and Alfred Oerter (discus), as well as Denmark’s Paul Elvstrom (sailing) and Japan’s Kaori Icho (wrestling).
After the victory, he made his retirement official by leaving his boots in the center of the mat.
THE REPROVED
The gap with the sports powers has become particularly noticeable at this Olympic Games, especially in swimming and athletics. Politics, economic crises and internal conflicts affected the performance of many Latin American athletes.
López’s gold does not cover up Cuba’s notable decline, especially in boxing. The former world power in this sport only celebrated the gold of Erislandy Álvarez and the bronze of two-time Olympic champion Arlén López. It was the worst harvest for Cuban boxing in 56 years.
In terms of medals, the island won just two gold medals and eight medals in total.
Other Cubans on the podium were Jordan Díaz (Spain), Pedro Pichardo (Portugal) and Ady Díaz (Italy) in the triple jump and boxer Loren Berto Alfonso (Azerbaijan), examples of the exodus of athletes from the island in search of better opportunities and which largely explains their poor performance.
Mexico also failed to meet expectations – no gold – and fell short of the record of nine medals set on home soil in 1968. Instead, they won five medals, three of them silver.
The great figure of the delegation was the diver Osmar Olvera, who won silver in the three-meter synchronized event together with Juan Celaya and a bronze in the individual event. Aquatic sports in general have paid the price for the long-standing dispute between the National Commission for Physical Culture and Sport (CONADE) and the Mexican Swimming Federation due to irregularities in the management of funds.
The other silver medals went to Marco Verde (boxing) and Prisca Awiti (judo). Additionally, there was a bronze medal in women’s team archery.
After leaving for Paris with high expectations, Colombia did not win any gold and was left with just three silvers in the bag, two of which came on the penultimate day of competition and from the weightlifting stage.
Colombian athletics and cycling were left without medals, having already awarded medals in the past. In contrast, Ángel Barajas stands out for his second place in the high bar event in artistic gymnastics.
Venezuela went from winning four medals in Tokyo to leaving Paris empty-handed. Among the reasons: economic sanctions against the country and the injury of Olympic triple jump champion Yulimar Rojas.
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