Vilches and Santos Earn Medals at IAAF World U20 Championships
7/15/2018 2:22:00 PM | Track & Field
Vilches wins gold in high jump, Santos earns silver in triple jump
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Future Mizzou Track & Field student-athletes Roberto Vilches (Mexico City, Mexico) and Mirieli Santos (Mato Grosso, Brazil) will each walk away from the IAAF World U20 Championships in Finland with hardware, as Vilches won a gold medal in the high jump and Santos a silver medal in the triple jump.
On Saturday, Vilches was one of two athletes to clear a mark of 2.23m (7-3.75) with his first jump at the bar, as he shared the gold medal with Greece's Arntonios Merlos (there are no jump-offs in IAAF events). In total, four athletes cleared the mark, two with their second jump, and none cleared the next height of 2.25m (7-4.5), giving gold medals to Vilches and Merlos. Vilches' mark would have been good-enough to finish second at the 2018 NCAA Outdoor Championships, and if Vilches were to have made the jump in a Mizzou uniform, the mark would have stood as the third-best mark in outdoor program history.
Vilches still holds the top-three U20 world-leading marks in the high jump following the meet, including the top mark of 2.26m (7-5), which he cleared at an April 28 meet in Queretaro, Mexico.
On Sunday, Santos recorded a personal-best mark of 13.81m (45-3.5) with her fifth-attempt to earn a runner-up finish, only coming in behind Bulgaria's Aleksandra Nacheva's mark of 14.18m (46-6.25). Santos' mark would have finished third at this year's NCAA Outdoor meet, and would stand as Mizzou's school record if she would have been leaping in a Black & Gold uniform.
Santos' mark moved her up to No. 7 on the U20 world list in the triple jump.
In addition, former Tiger Karissa Schweizer (Urbandale, Iowa) set a new personal best in the 1500m run on Saturday, as she finished first with a time of 4:06.77 at the Guldendendensporenmeeting in Kortrijk, Belgium. Because Schweizer has yet to choose a professional club to run with, her mark will stand as a school record since she ran it in a Mizzou uniform.
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