Pan American Games Santiago 2023 | Gustavo Matus, President of the Cycling Federation: “It will bring us many more joys” | What is Hugo Ruiz Galle’s historic cycling gold and omnium, and how he won it | Santiago 2023 | IPD | COP | Game-Total

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For the first time, cycling is celebrating a gold medal in an event of this magnitude. “We didn’t expect gold, but since Hugo had been looking for it for a long time, we expected a good result,” the president of the cycling federation, Gustavo Mateus, tells us. “He lost his silver medal at the Pan American Cycling Championships when another cyclist and his tire blew out in the same event,” he tells us.

As the president says, Hugo traveled to Argentina a few months ago to train with a team from San Juan with a view to Santiago 2023. This can be seen in the cyclist’s social media posts. “It’s more about happiness. It’s not now, he’s been fighting every match for a year,” Matus says.

Hugo is a road competitor – street racers – which is why he has the stamina to compete in omnium trials, which are over 200 laps of the velodrome, each lap 250 metres.

“Before this great achievement, we go back to the I Pan American Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina to see Hernán Llerena Valderrama take the bronze medal in the individual effort. At Lima 2019, he won the Olympic sprint bronze medal with Robinson Ruiz Calle (Hugo’s brother), Francis Cachik and Ruben Salinas. received,” said the Peruvian Cycling Federation.

It was the second gold medal for the Peruvian delegation, after Cristian Pacheco in the marathon. Meanwhile, in Badminton yesterday, a bronze medal was added in mixed doubles with Inez Castillo and Jose Guevara.

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The Omnium is an event that combines four trials. They start on a scratch of adding points in the order of arrival, where the Peruvian added 20, but finished in 11th place.

Then everything turned around. In Tempo, every 5 round points are awarded to the first, who reaches 36 more units. In the third event, the eliminations, the national team finished third – the last time they took each of the specified number of rounds – with another 36 points.

The finish was tense due to the so-called points, where the first finishers are rewarded every 10 laps. Hugo was outstanding until reaching the final 125 and won gold by one point over Mexican Ricardo Pena. Thus, Peru’s celebration continues in Santiago.