Soledad González

Happy birthday to Mexico’s sprinter and middle-distance runner Solecito González, a national medallist who moved across the country this year to chase the next stage of her career. Soledad is a national medallist with gold, silver and bronze to her name, a two-time gold medallist at primera fuerza level, and a national record holder.

She is a sprinter first, built around the 400m, with the range to carry that speed up through the 800m and out to the 1500m — which makes her the hardest kind of athlete to plan a season against, because she can be put in three very different races and be dangerous in all of them. Her 800m best stands at 2:11.03 and her 400m at 56.26, and she has spent consecutive seasons racing at national championship level — individually and in the relays at Tlaxcala, and then this year in Guadalajara, where she ran the 4x400m in 3:46.95 during the 2026 Olimpiada Nacional CONADE.

The big story of her last twelve months happened off the track. She is a regiomontana, from Monterrey in Nuevo León, and left the state she grew up competing for and moved roughly 1000km northwest to Ciudad Juárez to join the athletics program at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez. UACJ announced her by name when they presented their squad for the 2026 cycle, and the way they described her tells you what they think they have signed: a diamante bruto — a raw diamond.

She couldn’t have picked a better program to enter. UACJ swept the regional Universiada in Chihuahua this May with a mass qualification in athletics, and the program is now openly aiming at the podium at the Universiada Nacional this October — their stated goal is not just to reaffirm themselves as a northern-Mexico athletics power but to beat their own medal haul. Uprooting yourself at nineteen to go and get better somewhere else takes a particular kind of seriousness, and the next few months are where that decision starts paying out.

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Soledad! Que tengas mucha salud, mucha alegría y un año lleno de marcas nuevas, en las dos vueltas y en la una. Ojalá te canten Las Mañanitas al amanecer. ¡Qué padre tenerte representando a México! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇲🇽