FOR the second time in under 24 hours, sprinter Yunidis Castillo overwhelmed the Bird’s Nest stadium when she set a new world record and picked up the gold medal in the Women’s 200-meter event (T-46 category) at the 13th Paralympics.

For Yunidis, this was her second gold medal, won with indisputable style and which transformed her into the fastest woman on the planet in this classifying group, thus assuring her a place among the ranks of Cuba’s medal-winning disabled athletes in this type of event: Omar Turro (200m and 400m) and Enrique Cepeda (long and triple jump), both of whom took part in the 1996 Atlanta Games, Cuba’s best Olympic performance ever. To date, Yunidis’ victories represent our second-best performance in the Paralympics.

The twice gold medal winner finished with a time of 00:24:72 in the 200m, in a race where five of the eight finalists had set their best times of the season. With this result, Yunidis improved on her 24.3s finish at the ParaPanAmerican Games in Rio de Janeiro 2007, making her one of the top 50 double gold medal winners, something that definitively places her among the most outstanding Cuban athletes in 2008.

"These two medals, in the 100m and 200m sprints, both new world records, I won them thanks to the effort I have put in over the past four years. I feel really happy because they are the fruit of intense training.

"From the moment I went out to run the 100m, I knew that I could beat my own personal best, the idea was to compete against myself. Plus I had already beaten many of my rivals in the 200m in my first final.

"I wish with all my heart to dedicate this double triumph to Fidel, to my mother and siblings, to my boyfriend who’s definitely watching this," stated Yunidis after the race.

Alicja Fiodorow (POL-25.96) and Julie Smith (AUS-26.03) won the silver and bronze medals, respectively.

To date, Cuba has won five gold, two silver and four bronze medals, sufficient to place the nation 16th on the medal table.

At the Casa Cuba, Carlos Miguel Pereira, Cuban ambassador here in Beijing, received a delegation comprising almost all the medal winners to make patent our people’s pride in the athletes’ triumphs. He congratulated them on these victories, which would be extremely welcome on the island following the devastation caused by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

Particular mention went to discus thrower Leonardo Díaz – Cuba’s first gold medalist at these Games – together with several of his colleagues, like Luis Manuel Galano, another track and field sensation in the 400m T-13 category.