Maite Hernandez

Happy birthday to Chile’s sprinter Maite Hernández, who has a national record and a national title and only crosses out of the U16 category today.

Last July in Asunción, at the Ibero-American U18 Championships, Maite ran on the Chilean 4x100m team that won gold in 46.43 and took down a Chilean U18 national record that had stood since 1999. Every one of the four of them was born more than a decade after that record was set. The Chilean press named the quartet Las Pumitas. Two months before that she had won the Chilean U18 100m title in 12.00, at fourteen years old, and in December 2024 she took silver over 80m at the South American Schools Championships in Bucaramanga.

Then in February this year she did the thing that says the most about where this is going. She entered an open 60m at Chillán, against senior women, and won it, running 7.82 in the heat for a personal best. Fifteen years old, in an adult field, first across the line.

She races for Club Atlético Formativo Talca in the Maule region under coach Cristian Salazar, and she is on Promesas Chile, the national institute’s high-performance youth programme. Local Maule press has already started calling her the fastest athlete the region has ever produced, and her clubmate Laura Aravena Palma (@lauraravenap) had her own birthday three days ago, so Talca has had a good week.

Congratulations on the end of a very good U16 career, Maite, and welcome to the first day of a U18 career that already has a national record in it. Almost nobody arrives in a new category with the record already banked.

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Maite! Que pases un bello cumple, con torta de mil hojas y todito el amor que te mereces. ¡Bacán! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇨🇱