MADRID, Spain.- Cuban high jumper Luis Enrique Zayas, champion of the Lima 2019 Pan American Games, was crowned champion at the athletics rally in Trinec, Czech Republic. This, his first victory of the season, was achieved this Tuesday with a jump of 2.26 meters.
In the tournament, in the silver category on the World Athletics tour, the Mexican Edgar Rivero and the Belgian Thomas Carmoy, both with 2.23 meters, were behind Zayas in second and third place.
With his second best record of the year, 2.26 meters (m), Cuban high jumper Luis Enrique Zayas, champion of the Lima 2019 Pan American Games, won today the Trinec athletics meeting, in the Czech Republic.#Cuba pic.twitter.com/H08HI3sz5d
– RicardoHernandez (@KundigoY) February 8, 2023
In the two previous competitions of the European winter tour, held in the Czech cities Nehvizdy and Hustopece, the Cuban had finished second and fifth, respectively.
With the mark of 2.27 registered in Nehvizdy, last January, Luis Enrique Zayas ranked, along with two other athletes, as the third man with the best mark in the world in 2023
Zayas, a native of Santiago de Cuba and under 20 world champion in Poland 2016, has a personal best on the indoor track of 2.33 meters, achieved in 2020 in Slovakia.
Last year he won the gold medal with a jump of 2.15 meters in the Cuba Cup of Athletics.
In the IV North, Central America and the Caribbean Senior Athletics Championship (Nacac) in Freeport 2022, held in Grand Bahamas, he won the high jump title with a maximum mark of 2.25 meters.
The 25-year-old athlete began in the sport practicing water polo, but soon turned to athletics. In eighth grade he was selected to enter the EIDE Captain Orestes Acosta, and jumped 1.85 under the tutelage of Professor Daniel Guerra, who led him to obtain a bronze medal in the National School Games. At the age of 15 he became a member of the national athletics team.
In 2019 and 2021 he was chosen among the most outstanding athletes in Santiago de Cuba.
