Angela Tenorio wins the 100m at the South American U23 Championships (© ConSudAtle)
Competition records were set in 12 events – eight of which were sprint disciplines – at the South American U23 Championships in Cuenca, Ecuador, which concluded on Sunday (30) after two days of action.
Competing on home soil, Angela Tenorio was one of the stars of the championships. She won the 100m on Saturday in a championship record of 11.09 and followed it just 90 minutes later by running the second leg on Ecuador’s victorious 4x100m team.
The quartet’s winning time of 44.18 was also a championship record and they were anchored by 17-year-old Gabriela Anahi Suarez, who had finished third in the 100m earlier in the day.
Chile’s Humberto Mansilla was one of the other standout performers of the championships.
In a hammer competition in which all three medallists threw way beyond Mansilla’s previous championship record, the 22-year-old successfully defending his title and broke the South American U23 record in the process.
He opened with a championship record of 73.38m before compatriot Gabriel Enrique Kehr almost matched it in round two with 73.33m. Mansilla responded with 74.38m and then sent his hammer out to 76.87m in round three, adding more than two metres to his own national record.
Kehr put together a consistent series and improved to 74.31m in round four, but Argentina’s Joaquin Gomez finished with a flourish, throwing 74.38m and 75.96m in the final two rounds to get in between the Chileans on the podium.
Like Tenorio, Colombia’s Anthony Zambrano came away from Cuenca with two gold medals. The 20-year-old smashed his PB to win the 400m in a championship record of 45.19, winning by 0.78. One day later he anchored Colombia to victory in the men’s 4x400m but this time with a much narrower winning margin, 3:09.77 to Brazil’s 3:09.90.
It was Colombia’s second 4x400m gold medal of the championships as their women’s quartet had also landed gold, clocking a championship record of 3:35.50.
One day after taking 100m silver, Brazil’s Vitoria Cristina Rosa won the 200m in a championship record of 23.04. Rosa’s compatriot Derick Silva won the men’s 100m in 10.17, also a championship record.
Micaela de Mello added to Brazil’s sprint success. Despite running into a -1.4m/s headwind, the 18-year-old won the women’s 100m hurdles in a PB and championship record of 13.31.
The championship record also fell in the longer event over the barriers, the women’s 400m hurdles, as Argentina’s Fiorella Chiappe won by almost three seconds in 56.25.
The other championship records set during the two days of action came in the women’s pole vault, won by Brazil’s Julian Campos with 4.40m, the women’s 20,000m race walk, won by Peru’s Leidy Guerra in 1:32:12.42, and the women’s long jump, which Venezuela’s Aries Sanchez won with 6.42m to break the previous mark set by esteemed compatriot Yulimar Rojas, the world triple jump champion.
Elsewhere, Brazil’s Wellington Morais came within seven centimetres of the championship record to win the shot put with a PB of 19.85m. Chilean teenager Martina Weil, daughter of 1992 Olympic 400m bronze medallist Ximena Restrepo and Chilean shot putter Gert Weil, won the women’s 400m in a national record of 52.60, taking more than a second off her PB.
