Mexico City.- Alexa Moreno is dreaming of another Olympic Final in the quest for medals in Paris 2024.
From the historic world medal five years ago to today, Alexa’s evolution has taken quantum leaps. The Mexican has a high degree of difficulty, consistency, landing on her feet every time, with good execution, maturity and experience that make us think she will be in the final of vaulting, her specialty.
“She’s going very solid, she’ll be very well-tuned, she did well and I think she’ll be at her best. I hope she’ll be back in the Final,” Claudia Esteva, a Mexican judge who will be at the French competition, told CANCHA.
She will face Simone Biles, with whom she did two camps in one year to improve her gymnastics and has had notable results.
It’s a version 3.0, from when her mother Yenderina was amazed when Alexa climbed onto swings as if they were vines at the age of two, to competing in her third Olympic Games.
She is backed by a gold medal in the vault at the World Cup in Slovenia this year and a bronze in the same event at the World Cup in Bulgaria, as well as a fourth place at the World Championships in Antwerp.
She is now training in a camp in Madrid alongside Ahtziri Sandoval and Natalia Escalera, who will also compete in Paris, and Mexico will take three gymnasts for the first time in its Olympic history.
Alexa Moreno has excelled in other areas beyond gymnastics. She is a writer, an avid reader, an architect, a scout, a polyglot, a student of Japanese culture, an anime fan, and now has her own Barbie.
Writer
She wrote her first book, “Singular and Extraordinary,” a work that shows her more real than ever.
In 200 pages, the athlete shares the different stages of her life, after more than 20 years of career in artistic gymnastics. Throughout these pages we discover an Alexa that very few people know, who since she was little has learned not to give up. An unusual and singular Alexa, as you can read in her book.
The world medalist says that gymnastics and writing a book are similar in the search for fine-tuning every detail until it is perfect.
Reader
One of her favorite authors is Percy Jackson because she likes the way he works with mythologies and she has started to investigate if it is true.
Alexa has books for every moment. She has a special affection for The Little Prince because it was the first book she read on her own when she was eight years old.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was the first book he finished, it had no pictures and was over 300 pages long and from that title on he started reading a lot more.
Architect
Alexa studied architecture and loves it because it is a way for her to express herself.
“Architects see it as communicating something to the world. It’s not just the building itself, you can shape what’s inside and make people feel comfortable and at the same time make it nice to look at,” says the best Mexican gymnast in history.
Scout
Her mother enrolled her in scouts before she was born.
Yenderina Medina went to camps while pregnant, and then she was taken to activities in her baby carrier. Alexa earned the Terminal BP Badge, the highest recognition in the youth scout category, while also training as a gymnast.
Self-effort had a great influence on Alexa since she was a scout as a child until she was 23 years old and it was this activity that helped her develop part of her character, something essential for high-performance gymnastics.
Good for languages
Alexa attended bilingual schools and learned English, French and Japanese, which she speaks fluently.
He received a scholarship to study and train in the United States at the University of California in Los Angeles and decided to stay in Mexico. As a hobby he did third degree equations, since he has a very developed mind.
Alexa’s siblings studied cybersecurity, architecture and nanotechnology.
Seduced by oriental culture
Since she was a child, she has been fascinated by oriental culture because it is so different from Mexican culture. The boom of Japanese and Korean culture is to her liking.
And she honored Japanese culture at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games when she performed the floor routine to the song Zenitsu, which is part of the soundtrack of the film Demon Slayer: Mugen Train.
The Mexican gymnast dyed her hair red and chose the color combination of her leotard inspired by the universe created by Koyoharu Gotoge.
Anime lover
The world medalist has a very peculiar taste for Japanese culture and her favorite manga is Fullmetal Alchemist written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa.
If I were an anime character I would be Shoyo Hinata, the protagonist of the Haikyu series, which tells the story of a short boy who loves volleyball and dreams of one day becoming a “Little Giant.” He then creates a club at his school, but ends up being the only member and trains on his own.
Inspire Barbie
The Mexican gymnast was honored with a Barbie doll along with eight other athletes as part of a Mattel project.
The former world number one tennis player Venus Williams, the Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade, the Australian footballers Mary Fowler and the Canadian Christine Sinclair, the French boxer Estelle Mossely, the Italian swimmer Federica Pellegrini, the Spanish Paralympic triathlete Susana Rodríguez and the Polish sprinter Ewa Swoboda are the other athletes who were celebrated with their own Barbie.
His achievements
– World bronze medal in horse jumping in Doha 2018.
– Fourth place in the Olympic vault at Tokyo 2020.
– Gold medal in horse jumping at the 2024 World Cup in Slovenia.
– Bronze medal in horse jumping at the 2024 World Cup in Bulgaria.
– Gold medal in show jumping at the 2023 World Cup in France.
– Bronze medal in floor at the 2023 World Cup in France.
-Five medals at the Central American and Caribbean Games San Salvador 2023.
ALEXA CITLALI MORENO MEDINA
Place of birth: Mexicali, Baja California.
Date of birth: August 8, 1994.
Age: 29 years old.
Specialty: horse jumping.
@YGayossoCANCHA
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