Heir of a successful tradition in the triple jump, Lazaro Martinez left his mark on Hayward Field and won a much-awaited gold medal for Cuba on the final day of the IAAF World Junior Championships, Oregon 2014 on Sunday (27). Martinez, who stands 1.92m tall, broke the triple jump championship record twice in the final, first with his opening 17.08m, four centimetres farther than his countryman Yoelbi Quesada’s mark set in 1992. He then improved it 17.13m in the following round. “I was aiming for six jumps and the world junior record (which is 17.50m and stood to the former East German Volker Mai since 1985), but I felt a minor discomfort in my right ankle on my second jump and passed two rounds to recover," said Martinez. "This is a win for all the team. I am very proud to bring the gold medal to Cuba after four silver medals in Eugene."Billed as the clear favourite after his world youth best of 17.24m earlier in the season, his 2014 best was almost a metre better than the next man on the list but Martinez still treated the competition like any other.“I came to this competition with the mindset that anyone could challenge me. I don’t take anything for granted.“I am honored to keep the (Cuban) tradition alive in the triple jump," he added. "We have a young generation of young jumpers who already shone internationally such as (world championships medallists Ernesto) Reve and Pedro Pablo Pichardo. I am humbled to have my name alongside great Cuban jumpers who preceded me."Martinez joined past Cuban male champions in this event: Yoelbi Quesada in 1992, Rene Hernandez in 1996, David Girat in 2002 and Pedro Pablo Pichardo in 2012. A native of Guantanamo, Cuba’s easternmost province, Martinez practised a variety of sports, including basketball and judo up to when he was 10. His mother, former 400m runner Isabel Contreras, encouraged him to take up athletics a year later and connected him to a friend and coach. “Initially I did not like athletics,” he said. “But I did a test with the coach and she told me I had the potential to enter the provincial sports school.”After an initial success on the track and especially in the jumps, he started to specialise in the jumps in 2010 under the watch of coach Manuel Guilarte. In his first season, he improved to 14.64m and then to 15.38m, a national age-14 best. He also cleared 1.97m in the high jump. Those results opened the doors to the national junior team.“Even if I had success in athletics, I did not like it much," he said. "It was coach Guilarte who instilled in me the love for the sport. To me, he is the best coach in the world."When he joined the national junior team in Havana, he started training under the guidance of coach Marcos Juvenal and continued to show rapid progress.&nbsp; A world youth leader with 16.53m heading into last year’s IAAF World Youth Championships, he lived up to the expectations in Donetsk by winning with a personal best of 16.63m. Hard work through the winter paid off again and in massive proportions early in 2014. In his season opener, he landed at 17.24m to become the first youth athlete ever to break the 17-metre mark. In the process, he joined 22 other Cubans in surpassing that barrier.A consistency around 16.80m-17.10m paved the way for his first IAAF Diamond League invitations in Shanghai, Rome and Oslo.And he did not disappoint. He finished second in the Chinese city and third in the Italian capital, only beaten by world and Olympic medallists Will Claye and Christian Taylor.“It is a privilege to compete with the world’s best," he said. "Imagine, I was watching them on TV in the Olympics and the World Championships in 2012 and 2013 and now competing with them. It is an incredible experience. I have nothing to lose and it inspires me to achieve better results."Martinez has become accustomed to receiving a lot of praise for his talent and potential. “I am aware of that, but I could not have achieved anything it if were not for my hard work in training. Triple jump is a very intensive event, it requires a lot of preparation to become a good jumper.”There is more to come before 2014 wraps up. He now has his eyes set on the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing next month and then back to Europe for more IAAF Diamond League outings.Outside the track, Lazaro is in all other respects an ordinary Cuban teenager. In his free time, he enjoys listening to Cuban reggaeton and US singers such as Usher and Beyonce. He finished high school with good marks and plans to take a program to become Physical Education teacher.Javier Clavelo Robinson for the IAAF

Heir of a successful tradition in the triple jump, Lazaro Martinez left his mark on Hayward Field and won a much-awaited gold medal for Cuba on the final day of the IAAF World Junior Championships, Oregon 2014 on Sunday (27).

Martinez honoured to uphold a Cuban tradition in Eugene

Championship records from US hurdler Kendell Williams and Cuban triple jumper Lazaro Martinez provided the highlights of the final day of the IAAF World Junior Championships, Oregon 2014 on Sunday (27).<o:p></o:p>Williams overhauled her compatriot Dior Hall off the last barrier of a thrilling race to win the 100m hurdles in a championship record of 12.89, equalling the fifth-fastest junior time ever and just 0.05 away from the world junior record of 12.84, which has been on the books since 1987 in the name of Cuba’s Aliuska Lopez.<o:p></o:p>Hall had a superb start and led for nine of the 10 hurdles but had to settle for second, albeit in a PB of 12.92.<o:p></o:p>Martinez, amazingly still only 16 but already a seasoned veteran in some respects after three appearances in the IAAF Diamond League this summer, confirmed his pre-competition status as the favourite and reinforced his country’s excellence in the triple jump.<o:p></o:p>Martinez was on fire from his opening jump, landing at a championship record of 17.08m, four centimetres farther than his countryman Yoelbi Quesada’s mark set in 1992.<o:p></o:p>He sealed his victory with 17.13m, another championship record, in the following round.<o:p></o:p>After a foul with his next attempt and passes in the fourth and fifth rounds, he ended his series with a valedictory 16.39m.<o:p></o:p>Germany’s Max Hess finished second with a personal best of 16.55m in the second round but was more than half a metre behind the classy Cuban.<o:p>Lake now swimming in gold</o:p>Morgan Lake can also look back on a hugely successful championships. <o:p></o:p>The British 17-year-old won the heptathlon on Wednesday and achieved a unique double when she won the high jump on Sunday.<o:p></o:p>Like Martinez, she is still a youth by international delineations and so can return to the championships in two years’ time to defend her titles.<o:p></o:p>Four women attempted 1.91m but Lake cleared on her first attempt to move into pole position and the prodigious Czech jumper Michaela Hruba, even younger than Lake at 16, got her second personal best of the afternoon when she went over that height on her third attempt.<o:p></o:p>At 1.93m, Lake cleared at the second time of asking while Hruba failed. Lake – the only athlete to get two individual gold medals in Eugene – then had three attempts at what would have been a British senior record of 1.97m although, in truth, none of the attempts were particularly close.<o:p></o:p>The two middle-distance gold medals went to a pair of athletes who were prohibitive favourites.<o:p></o:p>After leading the field through 400m in a phenomenally fast 49.42, Kenya’s 17-year-old Alfred Kipketer showed the rest of the field a clean pair of heels over the second leg to win in a world junior leading 1:43.95, just 0.16 away from the championship best of 1:43.79 set by Botswana’s Nijel Amos in Barcelona two years ago. <o:p></o:p>Second was another Kenyan, Joshua Masikonde, in 1:45.14 and the first seven men home all registered personal best times.<o:p>Runaway win for Seyaum</o:p>Dawit Seyaum, the only junior this year to have run faster than four minutes, front-ran her way to gold in the women’s 1500m with equal authority.<o:p></o:p>She was in the lead at the 800m mark, passed in 2:17.13, and despite being occasionally challenged by her compatriot Gudaf Tsegay over the last two laps, Seyaum never looked seriously threatened and won in 4:09.86.<o:p></o:p>Tsegay was just under a second behind in 4:10.83 and took the silver medal.<o:p></o:p>However, not every event went according to form on Sunday.<o:p></o:p>Barnabas Kipyego turned the tables on his more highly rated compatriot Titus Kibiego, the Kenyan trials winner, in the men’s 3000m steeplechase and sprinted away from his team-mate down the home straight to win in 8:25.57 with Kibiego second in 8:26.15.<o:p></o:p>Latvian javelin thrower Gatis Cakss caused the biggest surprise of the final day.<o:p></o:p>Lying down in fifth place, and ranked only eighth in the world ahead of the final, Cakss hurled his last attempt out to 74.04m to move into pole position and none of the four men left to throw could respond, including Slovenia’s Matija Muhar, the 2014 world junior leader with 75.38m.<o:p></o:p>Muhar had to settle for second with 72.97m, which he threw in the second round, and fouled the very last throw of the competition in his last-gasp bid to retain the lead.USA relay doubleAs is traditional at major international championships, the curtain came down with the 4x400m relays.<o:p></o:p>For the seventh consecutive championships, the US women won their event coming home in a 2014 world junior-leading time of 3:30.42.Shamier Little, the 400m hurdles champion, took the first leg and got to the exchange first. Olivia Baker on the second leg got to the break in front and barring accidents, that was almost the end of the show.<o:p></o:p>However, there were no stumbles or dropped batons to open the door to any of the US quartet's rivals. <o:p></o:p>Shakima Wimbley and individual 400m champion Kendall Baisden combined to come home comfortably ahead of silver medallists Great Britain.<o:p></o:p>The US men won the very last of the 44 gold medals on offer across the six days in a similar commanding fashion in 3:03.31.<o:p></o:p>Josephus Lyles put the US squad in front on the first leg and the men that followed – Tyler Brown, Rick Morgan and Michael Cherry – didn’t relinquish that lead.<o:p></o:p>After six days of the championships, the host nation was a clear leader in the medal tables with 11 gold medals, five silver and five bronze for a total of 21 medals. It was the most medals they had ever won and just one shy of the best ever medal haul at the World Junior Championships, 22 from the USSR in 1988.<o:p></o:p>Distance running powerhouse Kenya finished second with four gold medals and 16 medals in total.<o:p></o:p>Overall 21 different national anthems were heard in Hayward Field since the start of the championships and 40 IAAF member federations had athletes stand on the medal podium.<o:p></o:p>Phil Minshull for the IAAF &nbsp;<o:p></o:p>

Championship records from US hurdler Kendell Williams and Cuban triple jumper Lazaro Martinez provided the highlights of the final day of the IAAF World Junior Championships, Oregon 2014 on Sunday (27).

Day six report:  Williams and Martinez set championship records – IAAF World Junior Championships, Oregon 2014

Lazaro Martinez confirmed his pre-competition status as the favourite and extended his country’s successful tradition in the triple jump by taking Cuba’s first gold medal at the IAAF World Junior Championships, Oregon 2014 with a championship record of 17.13m.A world junior leader by almost a metre heading into Eugene, Martinez was on fire from his opening jump, landing at a championship record of 17.08m, four centimetres longer than his countryman Yoelbi Quesada’s mark set in 1992.He sealed his victory with 17.13m, another championship record, in the following round. After a foul with his next attempt and passes in the fourth and fifth rounds, he ended his series with 16.39m.Germany’s Max Hess finished second with a personal best of 16.55m in the second round while Brazil’s Mateus de Sa entered the mix for the medals and finished third with a national junior record of 16.47m, also in in the second round. Another Cuban, Andy Diaz, had a wind-assisted 16.43m on his final attempt but it was not enough to reach the podium.Martinez, the world youth champion, doesn’t turn 17 until later in the year so he stands a chance to become the first male triple jumper to win back-to-back world junior titles in Kazan 2016. His compatriot Dailenys Alcantara accomplished that feat in 2008 and 2010. Martinez joined past Cuban male champions in this event: Yoelbi Quesada in 1992, Rene Hernandez in 1996, David Girat in 2002 and Pedro Pablo Pichardo in 2012. A third of the island’s 24 world junior titles have been won in the triple jump.Javier Clavelo Robinson for IAAF

Lazaro Martinez confirmed his pre-competition status as the favourite and extended his country’s successful tradition in the triple jump by taking Cuba’s first gold medal at the IAAF World Junior Championships, Oregon 2014 with a championship record of 17.13m.

Martinez honoured to uphold a Cuban tradition in Eugene

Day six report: Williams and Martinez set championship records – IAAF World Junior Championships, Oregon 2014

Report: men's triple jump – IAAF World Junior Championships, Oregon 2014