Last December, Yulimar Rojas bought shoes for everyone who trained at the Simón Bolívar Sports Complex in the city of Puerto La Cruz, in Anzoátegui, eastern Venezuela. The 24-year-old Venezuelan athlete who in February took away the record in triple jump that she held for 16 years from Russian Tatiana Lebedeva, took her first leaps on that battered track, led by Jesús Tuqueque Velásquez, her coach in the youth stage .
67 years old and a little more than five feet tall, Velásquez accumulates disparate framing photos with the athlete who, as a teenager, measured 1.92 with whom he has achieved dozens of sporting glories. The coach also keeps a handwritten memory of the achievements of the Olympic medalist during the time in which she was trained, a log with her measurements and marks, press clippings. Now, from the hot Puerto La Cruz, mired in the fuel crisis that still afflicts the oil country and that has joined the coronavirus, follows the career of her pupil. "This week I saw a video of Yulimar jumping," he says excitedly on the phone as soon as he is asked about her. In addition to certifying his brand at the Meeting Villa de Madrid on February 21 with a stride of 15.43, last Friday, after a break in activities due to the pandemic, Rojas won the triple jump in the Diamond League of athletics in Monaco with a discreet distance of 14.27 meters.
Coach Velasquez now has 12 teenage athletes under his charge, of whom he believes half have potential. "They don't come out as many as before, it's difficult to retain them," he says. On a track invaded by weeds, with all the cracked cover, he tries to keep the youngsters optimistic. Each Yulimar triumph abroad makes him rumble in that lane with the intention of stimulating them. “Now it is very difficult to go to championships. In Venezuela, an athlete's career is in the hands of his coach and his family who make every effort to take these boys to all training sessions and competitions. There is not even transportation to go from one state to another. The Government does not help with training, only when you start to have brands do they start to appear ”.
Yulimar also came out of a quarry of difficulties. She grew up in the humble neighborhood of Pozuelos, in Puerto La Cruz. They also gave her shoes. She had a pair of hurdles that Velasquez bought for her. Others of nails, special to jump, that came with a gold. In a South American youth championship, Marco Oviedo, vice president of the National Athletics Federation, challenged her to buy him some if she won, recalls her first coach. "When Yulimar was here you could still travel, there were resources, conditions were better."
Velásquez repeatedly posts videos on his Instagram of the track where he continues to train young people still in quarantine on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. “This is the athletics track where Olympic runner-up Yulimar Rojas trained. I call on the authorities and President Nicolás Maduro who twice promised to repair it. Athletes have nowhere to prepare, ”he says in the recording. Reporting is part of their routine. Training in facilities without adequate conditions, in the midst of a prolonged economic and social crisis, is another discipline. "I tell the boys to run around the edges, because the center of the lane has a lot of potholes even though we have put dirt on it to level it."
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A little more than a decade ago there was talk in Venezuela of a golden generation, measured by the sports performance that the country had during the boom years in oil income. In 2008, the country went to the Beijing Olympics with 108 athletes, the highest number in history, although it only managed a bronze. The milestone fell in the following London Olympic cycle when they only managed to reach 68, but Rubén Limardo got gold in fencing. It was at this time that Yulimar Rojas, a very tall girl who was initially interested in volleyball, arrived at the sports center where Velásquez found he could make her shine in athletics. Then came the competition trips to which she accompanied her: the United States, Canada, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, the Pan American Games, the South American Games, to national and Bolivarian championships. He was always by her side.
The coach remembers with adrenaline the moment when he played it with the athlete. It was 2014 and she had just become a South American high jump champion. With just three weeks off and against all odds, he enrolled her in a national triple jump competition, the modality in which today resonates in world athletics, but which at that time had barely had a month training. “In a training session she challenged some minor male athletes. She ran, took off and did the three phases of the jump reaching, with a clinical eye, almost 12.7 meters. I realized that I could do it. " He skipped the technical commission and enrolled her only in that test in some national games. “From three jumps she made two failures, her legs went away, I was scared, but she managed a valid one of 13.5 meters. Yulimar was already done there ”, he says and completes the feat with an unexpected twist. “For the next phase, from the stands I yelled at him not to jump anymore. Still winning the test, I spoke to the judges and withdrew it. I took it out of the cheek piece. What would have happened if I let her continue and the South American champion broke her ankles? "
A year later, Velásquez handed over the witness of Yulimar Rojas's training to the Cuban athlete Iván Pedroso, seven times world champion, who trains her in Guadalajara, Spain. The jump from Puerto La Cruz and Madrid was followed by the Olympic silver in the long jump in Rio de Janeiro and the golds of the 2016 and 2018 indoor world championships, the 2017 and 2019 athletics world championships, and the Pan American Games of the last year in Peru. The suspension of the Tokyo games by covid-19, robbed her of an opportunity to consecrate herself once again as the queen of the triple jump. But she keeps winning. This Friday, she claimed victory in the Diamond League in Monaco, a jump that was also on Velasquez's agenda.
Oviedo, the one who gave Rojas his first spike shoes, says that his performance has to do with getting her out of the country on time with initial support from the Venezuelan Athletics Federation and the National Sports Institute. “Due to the conditions she already had, she had to be trained abroad to improve her technique. Now she is an inspiration in Venezuela. All girls want to be Yulimar ”, commented the sports leader a few months ago, when he broke the record. "She is very persevering, cheerful, has enough will, has speed and a lot of strength, but the three potatoes (meals) and the necessary medical attention was not going to be in Venezuela," concludes coach Velásquez.