Colombia’s Ronal Longa at the Pan American Championships (© Oscar Muñoz Badilla)
Colombia’s Ronal Longa and Puerto Rico’s José Figueroa led top sprinting performances at the first ever Pan American Championships, while Cuba’s Daily Cooper achieved a middle-distance double with a world-class time in the 800m.
With Medellín’s 1500-metre altitude and 2027 Pan American Games wild cards up for grabs, Longa led the 100m qualifiers with 10.00 and stormed to a South American record of 9.85 (1.5m/s) in the final.
Immediately after crossing the finish line, he invited his coach Nelson Gutiérrez to join him in the celebration as he addressed the crowd.
Canada’s Eliezer Adjibi, who broke the 10-second barrier for the first time (9.92), and Puerto Rico’s Eloy Benitez (9.98) joined Longa on the podium.
Figueroa continued his winning streak in South America. Following his gold medal performances at the 2025 Pan American Junior Games in Paraguay and the 2026 Ibero American Championships in Peru, he joined the sub-20-second club and improved his own national 200m record to 19.87 (0.4m/s). He added two more medals with national records in the 4x100m and 4x400m.
Cooper surprised herself and the whole crowd with a mouthwatering 1:56.10 win in the 800m, a personal best by almost two seconds. She now sits sixth on this year’s world top list. She struggled with altitude a day earlier but managed to also win the 1500m.
María Fernanda Murillo led the 53 Colombian athletes on home soil. A former high jumper who claimed 2018 world U20 bronze, Murillo transitioned to the combined events in 2023. She started the heptathlon with a bang in Medellín, shedding 0.15 from the Colombian record in the 100m hurdles (12.74). After a 1.83m clearance in the high jump, she cruised to a PB score of 6367.
A month after breaking the Brazilian record in Peru (12.68), Vitoria Sena Batista Alves continued her progress in the 100m hurdles. She ran her second fastest time (12.59), only 0.02 shy of her PB set eight days earlier in France.
Yeral Nuñez and Gabriel Moronta led an extraordinary weekend for the Dominican Republic as the team prepares for the Central American and Caribbean Games on home soil later this summer. Coached by two-time Olympic champion Félix Sánchez, Nuñez improved his two-year-old personal best to 48.20 to take 400m hurdles gold.
Moronta broke the 45-second barrier for the first time to clinch the 400m title in 44.67.
Other standout performances came in the women’s 400m with Canadian champion Lauren Gale (50.68) narrowly edging out Puerto Rico’s Gabby Scott (50.69) and Colombia’s Lina Esther Licona Torres with a personal best of 50.75.
The top marks in the field came on the closing day through Chile’s Claudio Romero in the discus (65.30m), Brazil’s 2018 world indoor silver medallist Almir Cunha dos Santos in the triple jump (17.24m), USA’s Austin Miller in the pole vault (5.81m) and Paraguay’s Lars Flaming in the javelin (82.10m).
The Dominican Republic led the medal table with 12 medals after dominating four of the five relays, with eight gold, two silver and two bronze. Brazil followed with 16 medals (7-5-4) from Canada (5-5-3). Twenty countries won at least one medal. Close to 500 athletes from 28 nations competed over three days on the brand-new track at the Alfonso Galvis Stadium.
The second Pan American Championships will be held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on 1-4 June 2028.
Javier Clavelo Robinson for World Athletics
