Her performance earned her recognition from national sports authorities as the best athlete of the year, along with boxer Julio César La Cruz
14ymedio, Havana, December 29, 2025 – Cuban triple jumper Leyanis Pérez Hernández affirms that “life is a fleeting moment that must be seized,” and she did just that in 2025. At 23, she dominated the World Athletics Championships, surpassing Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas, retained her Diamond League title, and won the World Indoor Championships. This achievement earned her recognition from national sports authorities as the best athlete of the year , along with boxer Julio César La Cruz
Pérez’s achievements came at a time when Cuban sport lacked figures like five-time Olympic champion Mijaín López, judoka Idalys Ortiz, and sprinter Omara Durand, all retired, in addition to a series of failures in boxing, wrestling, baseball, and volleyball. The Pinar del Río native has revived track and field, which had been battered by defections.
The road has been fraught with setbacks. After a disappointing fifth place at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Pérez won gold at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow. She started 2025 with a second-place finish at the Miramas Athletics Meeting, consistently achieving jumps exceeding 14 meters.
Behind Pérez is coach Ricardo Ponce, who has focused training on exercises to help the triple jumper break the 15-meter barrier. She achieved this goal at the Puma Meeting in Guadalajara (2024); however, a slight tailwind exceeding the permissible limit (2.3 m/s) prevented her from validating the record.
“You have to make many sacrifices, but nothing surpasses the satisfaction of surpassing yourself and winning a medal,” the triple jumper stated last September.
Pérez has focused on technical details with her left leg. Ponce says the young woman is ready to jump 15.20 meters. Although 15.30 meters would be even better. “You have to make many sacrifices, but nothing beats the satisfaction of surpassing yourself and winning a medal,” the triple jumper stated last September. This year, she also graduated with a degree in Physical Culture.
The road hasn’t been easy for Pérez. The young woman overcame a muscle strain that prevented her from competing in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. “Accepting that I was there, and not competing, was devastating for me,” she told the same media outlet. At that moment, her coach took the tall, 1.88-meter (6’2″) athlete and assured her that “everything was going to change, that life would go on.”
The triple jumper, who lives in the Cuba Libre popular council, known as El Rancho, in the municipality of Pinar del Río, began to stand out internationally in 2022: she won the Ibero-American Championship in Alicante (Spain) and placed fourth in the final of the World Championship in Eugene (USA).
At the 2023 Pan American Games, she won the gold medal with a jump of 14.75 meters. She also reached the podium at the World Athletics Championships, taking home a bronze medal with a jump of 14.96 meters on her first attempt. Her personal best was 14.98 meters, achieved in July of that year at the Central American and Caribbean Games. Now, she aspires to win an Olympic medal.
Pérez told AFP last September that “when you’re in Cuba, you just have to follow the existing legacy, train hard to uphold it.” The young woman recalled that in her early days, “the triple jump scene was already well-established; there were great triple jumpers and long jumpers in my country, so you have no choice but to go out there and give it your all.”
See also: Cuban Faces 2025: The 14 Faces That Marked the Pulse of Cuba in 2025
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