Ximena Esquivel

Happy birthday to Mexico’s high jumper Ximena Esquivel, a national champion who has been on world podiums for her country and is now testing herself in two brand-new events.

Ximena’s biggest day came at the World U20 Championships in Bydgoszcz, where she cleared 1.89m to take the silver medal — a result Mexican national press reported as history-making, because global medals in the vertical jumps do not come along often for Mexico. She backed it with a silver at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla at 1.86m, a seventh place at the Pan American Games in Lima, and a silver at the Pan American U20 Championships. Her personal best stands at 1.91m. Domestically she is a Primera Fuerza national champion.

What she is doing now is the interesting part. This season her marks have come in the triple jump and the long jump rather than the high jump — 12.67m and 5.67m respectively. The high jump and the horizontal jumps share almost nothing beyond the runway: different approach, different rhythm, different takeoff mechanics, different everything at the moment it matters. Choosing to learn a new event from scratch, after a decade of international competition in another one, takes a kind of nerve that does not show up in a results table.

She is a queretana through and through, from Queretaro, where the state sports institute has celebrated her medals for years, and she studied at the Universidad Anahuac Queretaro. Her own bio is four characters and a location pin: her state, her country, and the words track and field. That is a woman who knows precisely what she is.

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Ximena! Que tengas mucha salud, mucha alegría y un año lleno de saltos nuevos, en el listón y en la arena. Ojalá te canten Las Mañanitas al amanecer. ¡Qué padre tenerte representando a México! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇲🇽