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Gonzalo Valdovinos Claims Revenge with Mexico City Marathon Victory Image: Diego Simón Sánchez | EL UNIVERSAL
🇲🇽 Mexico /Sports

Gonzalo Valdovinos Claims Revenge with Mexico City Marathon Victory

From El Universal · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

In-depth Named sources Outcome reported
  • Gonzalo Valdovinos won the men’s wheelchair division at the Mexico City Marathon in 1:39:15, a year after a fall left him with a bronze medal.
  • Pedro Gandarilla finished second, while Colombia’s Francisco Sanclemente, who also fell with Valdovinos the previous year, finished third.
  • Valdovinos also won his third Mexico City Half Marathon title in July.

Gonzalo Valdovinos returned to the Mexico City Marathon course one year after a fall disrupted his race and took the title in the men’s wheelchair division.

The Mexican athlete said a course irregularity caused him and Francisco Sanclemente to crash during the previous year’s marathon. Valdovinos still finished third, but he said the bronze medal felt like gold because of what he had overcome.

It was a fall where everyone passed me. Everyone left me behind, but I got up with the courage of any champion.

— Gonzalo ValdovinosHe described recovering from the crash in the previous year’s Mexico City Marathon.

This time, Valdovinos crossed the finish line first in 1:39:15. Pedro Gandarilla placed second, while Sanclemente, competing for Colombia, finished third. Valdovinos praised the revised route and the work of traffic officials, saying the course allowed competitors to race with confidence and without fear of being knocked down.

They improved the route. It is better laid out. Traffic management did its job very well, so you could race with confidence, without fear that someone would get in your way and knock you down.

— Gonzalo ValdovinosHe praised the revised course after winning the men’s wheelchair division.

His preparation included a 20-day training camp in the cold at La Malinche in Tlaxcala. He had set winning the 43rd Mexico City Marathon as his goal. Valdovinos, who competed at the 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Summer Games, said the hardest part of the race was measuring his training against the full route and strong competitors.

The victory added to his summer results. In July, he won the Mexico City Half Marathon for the third time.

The hardest thing is completing the course because you have to know and measure the capacity of what you did in training.

— Gonzalo ValdovinosHe discussed the challenge of converting his preparation into a marathon victory.
About this summary

Originally published by El Universal in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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