Olympic Sprinter Arodi Vega of Mexico starts the 2022 season with high challenges

For Fernando Arodi Vega -a Club Fortaleza athlete- the 2022 season is full of new goals and challenges against the clock. The Sinaloan holds the Mexican record of 400m hurdles and among his plans for the season is to break again the mark of 49.32 seconds that he did on July 11, 2019, during the World University Games in Naples, Italy.

“I know I have the potential and I would like to exploit it to the fullest to reach the Olympics and World finals. The idea is to break the Mexican Record again, to have a mark that will help me to qualify for World Championships or Olympic Games… I could go for points, but we want to qualify directly, break the record again and set the mark”.

Born in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Vega Félix broke the oldest 400m hurdles record in Mexican athletics, since the mark of 49.41s belonged to Jesús Aguilasocho another Sinaloan, for almost 34 years; in addition, Arodi has another Mexican record with his name, as also at the 2019 Naples Universiade he was part of the men’s 4x400m relay that has set the best Mexican time trial of all time (3:02.89), alongside Valente Mendoza, Edgar Ramírez and Jose Jimenez. Months after breaking both records, he represented Mexico at the 2019 Doha World Championships and qualified for the second round of the hurdles oval lap, where he placed 19th in the general classification, registering 49.95 seconds.

However, the Athlete from Fortaleza admits how difficult it is to seek world quality without a generation accompanying him in the process, as happens in the 400m where there are more high-level Mexican runners, such as Valente Mendoza, also Fortaleza’s Athlete, or the U20 World Champion Luis Ferreiro.

“The problem in Mexico is that we don’t have more 400m hurdles runners that help ‘push’ each other. In Europe you can be a ‘lone wolf’ of your country, but you have competitions one or two hours away, while Mexico is a very large country with few competitions; we have the option of going to the United States, but you have to do it in Europe to measure yourself against the best”, added Fernando Arodi, who will turn 24 on February 19.

Arodi has spent the equivalent of three Olympic cycles immersed in athletics, but from a very young age his parents instilled in him continuous learning, beyond school; he practised taekwondo, swimming and learned to play the guitar, but thanks to a school career he began his path on the track.

At the beginning of January, Arodi migrated from Monterrey, Nuevo León to Mexico City, to continue his training with coach Israel Germán. Although Arodi was advancing in the pre-Olympic year with good results and was two-hundredths behind the qualifying mark for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the postponement and cancellation of events, including the Games themselves; with the change to home training, performance was diminished.

“It has been almost two difficult years for everyone, but for the same reason it was for everyone, it is not an excuse to complain; we all had a difficult time to a different extent, in the end, the year was slowly building up and that helped us adapt to the new normality”, considered the athlete who studied Innovation and Development Engineering and is now studying a Master’s Degree in Business Development.

With a more stable environment, Fernando Arodi already has the goals for 2022. “At the national level we want to compete in the National Student Sports Commission of Private Institutions Games (Conadeip); then in the National Universiade; in the National Championship of 1st Force and if sanitary measures allow it, in some Club Fortaleza events; internationally, at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon and at the World Universiade in Chengdu, China. The idea is to go and support the USA, also be in Mexico in as many competitions as possible, try to compete for as much as possible to give the ‘pull’ and improve”, the Sinaloan sprinter reiterated.

 

Source: AIPS