• Firsts
  • Lasts
    • Brazilian Soccer Player Marta. (AP)

    Brazilian Soccer Player Marta. (AP)

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    Firsts Lasts

    Firsts and Lasts: Latin Americans Making History at the 2024 Olympics

    By Khalea Robertson

    Regional soft power is on display in Paris, where some Latin American athletes have achieved historic firsts and others achieved triumphant career ends.

    Latin American and Caribbean athletes have shone at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Verified superstars like Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade justified the hype around her friendly competition with Simone Biles of the United States, whom she beat to gold in the floor exercise but placed second in the all-around event. On August 10, the U.S.-Brazil rivalry will make its way from the padded floors of a gymnasium to the grassy soccer field of the Parc des Princes, when two trailblazing national women’s teams face off in an Olympic final.

    Meanwhile, athletes from even some of the hemisphere’s smaller nations have surprised global sporting superpowers en route to their first taste of Olympic glory, while others drew new fans to less regionally popular sports with eye-catching performances. 

    AS/COA Online compiled a non-exhaustive list of Latin American and Caribbean Olympians who made history for their countries by achieving significant firsts. And we also pay tribute to two athletes who leave behind larger-than-life legacies at their last Olympic Games.

    Firsts

    Colombia won its first Olympic medal in gymnastics thanks to a 17-year-old phenomenon named Ángel Barajas Vivas. Competing on the horizontal bar, Barajas and Japanese gymnast Oka Sinnosuke both earned the event’s highest score: 14.533. The Colombian teenager settled for silver due to a lower execution rating, a metric used as a tie-breaker.

    Hailing from San José de Cúcuta, a city on the Venezuelan border, Barajas has put gymnastics on the map in Colombia.

    He even got a shout out from his gymnastics idol, LazyTown character Sportacus, with actor Magnus Scheving calling him a “true superhero.” 

    Francisca Crovetto Chadid became the first Chilean woman to win an Olympic gold medal in any discipline, besting her British rival in a tense shoot-off that concluded the women’s skeet event. 

    The last Chilean woman to win any Olympic medal was Marlene Ahrens, who earned silver in the javelin throw in 1956. Crovetto, a four-time Olympian, also ended Chile’s 16-year drought of Olympic podium placements and the country’s 20-year wait for gold. 

    In an emotional interview following her medal ceremony—in which the reporter called Crovetto “the best athlete in Chilean history”—the markswoman credited her victory to the love she felt from her family, friends, and all of Chile.

    At 16 years old, Adriana Ruano Oliva received news of an injury that ended her Olympic dreams as a gymnast. She then picked up shooting in 2013 as a way to remain in competitive sport.

    At 29 years old, she hit 45 of her 50 targets in the women’s trap event, setting an Olympic record and securing Guatemala’s first-ever gold medal at the Olympics. In fact, Ruano and compatriot Jean Pierre Brol, who won bronze in the male trap competition, tripled their country’s overall medal count.

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

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    Alan Cleland Quiñonez captured Mexican fans’ hearts when he became the country’s first surfer to compete in the Olympics. Cleland, a 22-year-old Colima native born to a Mexican mother and Southern Californian father, has been surfing since the age of four and competing in international competitions since he was 12. Sadly, hearts were broken when the surfer was eliminated on July 29, despite getting the second-highest score out of eight competitors as the competition headed into the semifinals. Still, Cleland sparked a new national interest in the sport and a video of the surfer shouting “Viva México” has gone on to be a celebratory meme used throughout the Games.

    The pain of Cleland’s loss was soothed a day later when Prisca Guadalupe Awiti Alcaraz took Mexico’s first-ever silver medal in judo. The 28-year-old, born in London to a Mexican mother and a Kenyan father, has been living in Mexico since 2017. While she could have competed for any of three countries, she opted for her mother’s home country, saying, “Where I’m from, they see you like a number. Here [in Mexico] I felt a fire in my heart that we want to keep getting better.” 

    Born in Bolivia to Argentine parents, José Torres Gil pulled out a huge score of 94.82 during what has been called the “best ever” BMX freestyle final to clinch Argentina’s first individual gold medal in a cycling discipline. His entry also marked the first time Argentina competed in BMX at the Olympics.

    Torres, whose nickname “Maligno” (Evil One) stems from his love of pranks, has spent recent years racking up a series of firsts for his country in the sport, including a gold medal in 2023 at the X Games. 

    In her Olympic debut, sprinter Julien Alfred of Saint Lucia won her country’s first Olympic medals ever, taking home gold and silver in the 100m and 200m dash, respectively. With all three of Jamaica’s top female sprinters absent from these marquee races, 23-year-old Alfred was the standard bearer not only for her native island, but for the Caribbean in the latest chapter of the region’s sprint rivalry with the United States.

    Another shining moment for the Caribbean islands was from triple jumper Thea LaFond, who made Dominica, with a population of approximately 70,000, the smallest nation to earn an Olympic medal after striking gold in her event. 

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

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    Lasts

    On July 6, Cuba’s Mijaín López became the first wrestler to win five gold medals and the first athlete in history to win a gold medal at five consecutive Olympic Games. He then immediately retired.

    “El Terrible” (The Terror) has competed in Greco-Roman wrestling at every Summer Games since Athens 2004—the only time he left the Olympics without a medal. Now 41, López has cemented his legacy in the sport and taken up the mantle of inspiring future generations, including his final opponent, Yasmani Acosta Fernández. Acosta, a Cuban-born wrestler who earned Chile’s first wrestling medal, acknowledged the mixed emotion of wanting the gold but not at the expense of López, “a legend in wrestling worldwide.”

    Sócrates, Pelé, Ronaldo, Marta: Icons of Brazilian soccer are known simply by one name.

    Marta has brought the world’s eyes and excitement to women’s soccer for two decades and is guaranteed a medal at her sixth and final Olympic tournament. Hearts dropped when Marta received a red card in Brazil’s last match of the group stage, meaning she would be suspended for the following two matches—the quarterfinal and semifinal. Her teammates rallied through the knockout phases to ensure that “A Rainha” (The Queen) would take her last bow in international soccer at the Olympic finals.

    Whatever the result against the United States on August 10, Marta, a tireless champion of the women’s game globally, stands tall among the pantheon of soccer greats.

    Carin Zissis contributed to this report.