Daily Cooper

Havana, June 17 (RHC).- Outstanding results from Daily Cooper, Roxana Gómez and Melany Matheus qualified the Cuban performance in athletic meetings held over the weekend with an eye on Paris-2024.

With a personal best of 1:59.40 minutes, Cooper (22 years old) won the 800 m, with a record for the competition and a personal best.

Pedro Tamayo's student was just 10 hundredths of a second away from achieving the minimum qualification mark to obtain a direct ticket to Paris 2024 (1.59.30), although she improved a lot through ranking, the other means of classification.

Pan American runner-up in Santiago-2023, but in 1500m, Cooper ran an intelligent race and attacked in the last 200m to surpass the Brazilian Flavia María de Lima (2:00.92) and the Cuban also already Olympic qualified, Rose Mary Almanza (2:00.92) 01.73).

For her part, Olympic finalist Roxana Gómez performed her best performance of the season, winning the 400m with 50.69 seconds, the meeting record.

Ricardo Molina's student clearly surpassed the Dominican Anabel Medina (52.65).

Also notable in Troyes was the four-year-old Yoandys Lescay, who is also in search of an Olympic quota.

Lescay, currently trained by Yaseen Pérez Gómez, covered the lap of the oval in 45.48 seconds, his best result of the season, to escort the Australian Reece Holder, the record winner of the meeting (45.19).

Completing the Cuban performance at the French rally were sprinters Shainer Reginfo (third in the 100m with 10.28) and Yunisleidy García (fourth with 11.54).

For their part, at the Nacac Invitational rally in the Bahamas, the Cubans had discreet results, although Andy Echavarría won the triple jump with 16.60m and consolidated himself in the Olympic qualification zone due to the ranking.

In the hammer, Cubans Ronald Mencías and Miguel Zamora were third and fourth, with 70.87 and 69.61 respectively, and Jocelyn Echazabal was fifth in the 100 hurdles (13.24).

And in the Jesús Molina Memorial, in the Pan American Stadium in eastern Havana, discus thrower Melany Matheus (63.61) and four-centista Melissa Padrón (52.81) stood out with personal bests.

The next stop for Cuban athletics in Europe will be this Tuesday in Bilbao (Spain), where Sahily Diago (800) and long jumper Hayla González (long) will perform, both in search of Olympic qualification.