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Lorena Arenas achieves fourth silver for Colombia

2021-08-06T17:24:09.476Z


The Pereira marcher finishes second in the grueling 20-kilometer test Colombian Sandra Arenas celebrates by crossing the goal of the Olympic march in second place. The Italian Antonella Palmisano, gold medalist, rests on the ground after finishing the 20-kilometer test.KIMIMASA MAYAMA / EFE The Colombian Lorena Arenas was the only competitor able to follow in the wake of the Italian Antonella Palmisano, in a devastating pace from start to finish in the sweltering h


Colombian Sandra Arenas celebrates by crossing the goal of the Olympic march in second place.

The Italian Antonella Palmisano, gold medalist, rests on the ground after finishing the 20-kilometer test.KIMIMASA MAYAMA / EFE

The Colombian Lorena Arenas was the only competitor able to follow in the wake of the Italian Antonella Palmisano, in a devastating pace from start to finish in the sweltering heat of Sapporo, to win the silver of the 20 kilometers.

The marchista, Pan-American champion in 2019, has presented Colombia in the most strenuous of tests her fifth medal of the Olympic Games, the second in athletics.

In the last kilometers, when Palmisano accelerated with an Italian flag tied around his neck, Arenas kept up the pace, held on tenaciously, while the other competitors slowed down little by little, with two-minute penalties that condemned the Chinese Jiayu Yang and the Brazilian Erica Sign.

The Chinese Hong Liu, Olympic champion in London, took the bronze and the Spanish María Pérez finished fourth.

More information

  • Anthony Zambrano achieves a historic silver for Colombian athletics

“It was a battle,” Arenas reacted, describing the friction, bumps and frictions of the Olympic march that are not usually observed in the transmission. “I feel immense happiness, I don't even know how to describe it. I had worked very hard for this, I had dreamed of it a long time ago and to see it now real, achieved, is a pride for me, for my country ”, celebrated the 27-year-old athlete, who had already participated in the jousts in London and Rio de Janeiro, but he had finished very far from the podium. Arenas was born in the city of Pereira and grew up in the countryside among coffee farms.

The second silver in athletics for Colombia, after the brilliant presentation of sprinter Anthony Zambrano in the 400 meter sprint, comes as a balm for the delegation in Japan. Without Zambrano (Maicao, 23 years old), a rising star who has already announced that he intends to reach gold in the Paris Olympics, the Colombian 4 x 400 team that aspired to get closer to the first places failed to qualify this Friday at the final.

The participation of the coffee country, a nickname more than deserved after the achievement of Arenas, is settled with five medals in Tokyo, none of them gold, a smaller harvest compared to the eight medals of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, where it celebrated three times at the top of the drawers. The bicyclist Mariana Pajón, two-time champion in London and Rio de Janeiro, also won the silver in BMX to become the most awarded athlete in her country, and her discipline partner Carlos Alberto Ramírez repeated the bronze of five years ago. The weightlifter Luis Javier Mosquera, silver in the 67 kilogram category, completes the medal table for Colombia.

Despite the fact that the Colombian Olympic Committee (COC) set the goal of looking for a dozen medals, several expectations of metals could not be fulfilled. Veteran triple jumper Caterine Ibargüen (Apartadó, 37 years old), who like Pajón also arrived in Tokyo as the current champion, reached the finals but could not say goodbye to the jousts with a new medal after establishing herself as a legend of world athletics with a silver in London and gold in Rio de Janeiro.

Other great hopes of metals such as the weightlifter Mercedes Pérez, the boxer Ingrit Valencia or the tennis couple Robert Farah and Juan Sebastián Cabal, specialists in doubles, said goodbye to the competitions without approaching the podium.

Neither did boxer Yuberjen Martínez, well-loved in his country after reaching silver in Brazil, be able to repeat the medal, as he lost to local Ryomei Tanaka in a very controversial decision by the judges.

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Source: elparis

All sports articles on 2021-08-06

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