12 Facts About Yipsi Moreno

Yipsi Moreno is a triple world champion and Olympic gold medalist, a former world junior record holder and current area record holder.

In 2016, after the 2008 Olympic gold medallist Belarus athlete Aksana Miankova received a disqualification by IAAF, Moreno ostensibly became Olympic hammer throw champion for Cuba in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

In 1997, Yipsi Moreno won the Pan American Junior Championships in Havana with a throw of 55.74 metres, improving the two-year-old championship record with ten metres.

Yipsi Moreno beat the second-place finisher Maureen Griffin by a 46 centimetre margin.

The cooperation paid off almost immediately as Yipsi Moreno established a new world junior record on 29 May 1999 with 66.34 metres at altitude in Mexico City.

Yipsi Moreno was selected to represent the Americas at the 2002 World Cup held in the same city two months later, and finished second.

Yipsi Moreno went on to foul on three of her five remaining efforts, managing 73.36 metres in the fourth round, while Kuzenkova had improved to 75.02 metres in the third round.

Yipsi Moreno did not compete at the World Athletics Final and experienced a foot injury which sidelined her for the first half of 2005.

In early 2006, Yipsi Moreno won her first Central American and Caribbean Games title, setting another championship record with 70.22 metres.

At the 2008 Olympics Women's Hammer Throw final, Yipsi Moreno again won a silver medal, this time behind Aksana Miankova of Belarus, who threw an Olympic Record distance of 76.34 meters in her second-to-last round.

Yipsi Moreno was in the silver medal position with one throw left, and in her final effort, she fell short of Miankova with a throw of 75.20 meters, although it was her best throw of the final.

Yipsi Moreno was declared 2008 Olympic Champion in 2016, after Belarusian Aksana Miankova was disqualified for using prohibited substances.