Javiera Musalem

Happy birthday to Chile’s heptathlete and long jumper Javiera Musalem, the reigning national champion in the toughest event Chilean athletics contests.

Javiera won the Chilean national heptathlon title in 2025, and 2026 has been the season where the individual pieces have all moved at once. She long jumped 6.24m in July, ran 14.06 over the 100m hurdles in June and clocked 12.57 for the flat 100m in February. Those are three lifetime bests in three different disciplines inside five months, which in a combined-events athlete is the pattern you want to see, because every one of them adds points to the same total. She had already won a national long jump title back in 2022.

That 6.24m came at the Complejo de Atletismo Eliana Gaete Lazo in Santiago, named for the Chilean hurdler who won back-to-back Pan American 80m hurdles golds in 1951 and 1955 and who also long jumped. Seventy-five years on, another Chilean woman doing both is jumping her best on the track that carries her name.

Javiera trains with Club Deportivo Manquehue, and in March she stood on the sand at Red Bull Speed Trap in Viña del Mar teaching the public how to come out of the blocks. Her own advice was to build every gym session around explosiveness, because that is what buys you the start.

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Javiera! ¡Que los cumplas feliz, y que sigan cayendo las marcas personales! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇨🇱