Adanelys Rodriguez León

Happy birthday to Puerto Rico’s sprinter Adanelys Rodríguez León, who has helped set three records in fifteen months and is on her way to the Central American and Caribbean Games.

On 28 June at the Pan American Athletics Championships in Medellín, Adanelys ran a leg of the Puerto Rican 4x100m that took the silver medal in 43.42 — a Puerto Rico national record — alongside Gladymar Torres, Legna Echevarría and Frances Colón. Four weeks earlier the same quartet had been in Lima at the Ibero-American Championships, where Adanelys ran the leadoff leg and Puerto Rico won gold in 43.78. It was the first time the island had won both the men’s and the women’s 4x100m at a championship of that level in the same weekend.

Before that came the Justas, the Puerto Rican university championships, and she was in the middle of two LAI records in one meet. The 4x100m in 44.19, taking down a mark from 2011. And the 4x400m in 3:39.87, taking down a mark from 2012 — run as the final event of the night, with the women’s team title riding on it, which her team then won.

Individually she has run 11.31 over 100m and 23.35 over 200m, and in July last year she took silver in the 100m at the Copa Sudamericana de Velocidad in Cuenca, Ecuador in 11.38. Puerto Rican coverage called her one of the principal promises of boricua athletics. She races for the Universidad Ana G. Méndez Taínas, who won the LAI team title and the Copa Global, and she is certified for Team Puerto Rico at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Santo Domingo.

Her Instagram bio is a flag, a star, and one line of scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:7. Walk by faith, not by sight. It is a fitting thing for a relay runner to keep in her bio, given the whole job is putting a baton into a hand you cannot see.

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Adanelys! Muchas felicidades, mucha salud, y que te canten cumpleaños feliz a ritmo de plena, como se hace en la isla. ¡Wepa! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇵🇷