Barbados’ Shane Brathwaite and Jamaica’s Yanique Dayle copped gold medals for their respectively countries at the 2023 CAC Games being held in San Salvador on Wednesday night.
There were eight finals in track and field on the night during which Venezuela’s world-record holder Yulimar Rojas established a new championship record while dominating the triple jump competition and Puerto Rico’s Jasmine Camacho-Quinn took home the coveted title of CAC 100m hurdles champion.
Brathwaite found himself in a dogfight with Rasheem Brown of the Cayman Islands and manage to emerge victorious despite both being credited with the same time of 13.64.
Brown took the silver while the bronze medal went to Jeanice Laviolette of Guadeloupe, who clocked 13.82 for third.
By contrast, Camacho-Quinn cruised to victory in the 100m hurdles, winning by daylight in 12.61.
Greisys Roble ran 12.94 and will take the silver medal back to Cuba while Costa Rica’s Andrea Vargas finished third in 13.02.
Dayle followed up her silver-medal run in the 100m with gold in the half-lap sprint that she won in 22.80. It was Jamaica’s first gold medal at the 2023 championships.
In a fierce battle for second place, Cuba Yunisleidy Garcia stopped the clock in 23.05 while just managing to hold off the challenge of Fiordaliza Cofil of the Dominican Republic, who was 0.02 behind in 23.07.
Alexander Ogando of the Dominican Republic came within a hair’s breadth of the Games record in the men’s race clocking 19.99 for the gold medal.
He came with 0.03s of Alonzo Edwards’ record of 19.96 set in 2018.
Colombia’s Carlos Palacious ran 20.37 to win the silver medal while Edwards, who is from Panama took the bronze in a time of 20.46.
Cuba had a 1-2 finish in the Women’s 800m that was won by Rose Almanza in 2:01.75 with her teammate Sahily Diago close behind in 2:02.81.
Shafiqua Maloney of St Vincent and the Grenadines copped third place in a time of 2:04.98.
Maloney’s teammate Handal Roban would win the men’s event in 1:45.93 resisting the challenge of Puerto Rico’s Ryan Sanchez, who ran 1:46.86 and the Dominican Republic’s Ferdy Agramonte, who copped bronze in 1:47.46.
In a triple jump competition of the highest quality, Rojas, the three-time world champion and world record holder, sailed out to a remarkable 15.16m to shatter the previous mark of 14.92m set by Colombian legend Catherine Ibarguen in 2018.
Cuba’s Leyanis Perez also went past the previous record setting a mark of 14.98m with her teammate Liadagmis Povea finishing third in an impressive 14.85m.
Dominica’s Thea LaFond was fourth with a mark of 14.42m.