Héctor Garibay: Football is his passion and he becomes the best athlete in endurance events

Héctor Garibay of the La Joya team in 2013 (crouching in the middle)

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Héctor Garibay was born on July 9, 1988 in the town of Totoral, Oruro province, he started playing sports as a football player, thanks to his speed and good resistance, He soon joined several Oruro football teams, playing in the first “A” divisions, including the La Joya team that was the protagonist of the AFO Championship at the time.

His entry into athletics is anecdotal: on the advice of his physiotherapist, in order to recover from an injury, he had to jog; one day that afternoon, on the track of the stadium, Nemia Coca noticed He, because of the resistance he showed, Koca invited him to practice athletics. He was inspired and soon achieved good results.

He began his career in athletics in 2018, competing in the 1,500m, 3,000m, 5,000m and rising to 10,000m, competing nationally and internationally. As of 2021, he is running a professional marathon. Since that year, Garyby has run seven marathons, the first being the South American Marathon in Asuncion (Paraguay), where he set a time of 2:22:27.

But the best results came in October of that year, when he won the Buenos Aires Marathon and established himself as one of the finest long-distance runners. In 2022, he participated in the Seville Marathon in Spain. Although he did not win, he reached the minimum score for the registration of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. This year, Seville was also approved. “. “No one in history has achieved the lowest score in Bolivia in this way,” declared her coach, Nemia Coca.

There is a working team behind Garribe, led by the couple Marcelo Peñaranda and Nemia Coca, founders of the Pie de Viento club in Oruro, je Keto was also formed there. Currently, Koca is in charge of the High Performance Program of the Autonomous Provincial Government of Oruro, which has achieved good results, with many athletes achieving excellent results in national and international tests.

There are now two very important tests for the athletes, the Pan Am Games marathon in Santiago (Chile) on October 22, “there is not much time left and a well-planned job must be done,” he explained. coach..

The main goal is to host the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024, aiming for a medal, which is not far from being achieved, but it will require planned work and a lot of support from the authorities.