Cuban Pichardo is congratulated by the President of Portugal for giving the country the fifth Olympic gold in its history

Cuban triple jumper Pedro Pablo Pichardo definitively entered Portugal’s sports history, just four years after his defection.

He won the first gold medal for Portugal at the Tokyo Olympics and only the fifth ever in the entire Olympic participation for the country. Carlos Lopes (1984), Rosa Mota (1988), Fernanda Ribeiro (1996) and Nelson Evora (2008), all in athletics, preceded him.

With his mark of 17.98 meters in the triple jump, which was a national record for his new country and the best mark of the year, Pichardo, 28 years old, won an historic gold medal. Portugal achieved its best Olympic Games with four medals, adding the bronze medals of Jorge Fonseca (judo) and Fernando Pimenta (canoeing) and the silver medal of Patricia Mamona (triple jump).

Before Tokyo, the best performances by Portugal had been three medals in Los Angeles 1984 and Athens 2004.

The athlete, from Santiago de Cuba in the far east of the island, has become a national record holder in two countries. He set the Cuban national record and seventh best world record of all time with 18.08 meters in 2015.

Besides being Portugal’s national mark, his jump of 17.98 in Tokyo was the second-best jump in Olympic Games history.

“This gold has a great meaning, as it is the only way I can thank the country that supported me. Thank you, with medals and good results. This title was already planned a long time ago that I would go to Portugal, not Cuba. These are things of life,” Pichardo told the Portuguese media.

The president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, thanked him in a message “on behalf of Portugal and the Portuguese” for his performance.

In April 2017 Pichardo left the Cuban national team in Stuttgart, Germany, where he was preparing for the 16th World Athletics Championships in London.

He was then the most promising figure of his country’s national team. At that time, only the marks of the Great Britain’s Jonathan Edwards (18.29) and the Americans Christian Taylor (18.21) and Kenny Harrison (18.09) were better than his jump.

He had already won silver medals at the World Championships in Moscow 2013 and Beijing 2015, and a bronze at the World Indoor Championships in Sopot, Poland.

A day before the start of the Olympic track and field tournament in Rio de Janeiro, Cuban doctors determined that he could not compete because of his right ankle injury. Thus, an almost certain medal for Cuba vanished.

Eight months later Pichardo defected and a few days later he reappeared in Lisbon, recruited by the athletics section of the famed Benfica club.

In November 2017, seven months after his arrival, he was granted Portuguese nationality and as of August 2019 he was authorized by World Athletics to compete under the new flag.

After his triumph in the Tokyo Olympic Stadium, Pichardo, who is coached by his father, spoke to the Portuguese media about the victory he had just achieved, his departure from Cuba, his family, and the controversy with Nelson Evora.

The disagreements with Evora, Olympic triple jump champion in 2008, started since the arrival of the Cuban who, after his quick naturalization, put an end to the reign of his predecessor in Portuguese competitions.

The Portuguese was in the same competition as Pichardo in Tokyo, but was injured in the first attempt and could not clear 15.39 meters, which left him in 27th place and last in the classification in what meant his farewell to the Olympic Games.

“I have been working for four years to give medals to Portugal. To hear that a Portuguese is not happy because a foreigner arrives in the country and feels happy to represent it...it is complicated, a little ungrateful” said Pichardo.

Now he will surely notice the situation changing as he returns to Lisbon with his Olympic title while still obsessed with Briton Edwards’ world record on the road to Paris.