Yancarlos Martinez may still be a newcomer to the sport, but the former baseball player will head to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games with his name already in the record books.
The 23-year-old won the 200m at the recent Ibero-American Championships, which doubled as the official test event for this year’s Olympics, and his winning time of 20.19 established a respectable stadium record for the rest of the world’s top sprinters to aim at when the half-lap event gets underway at the Games on 16 August.
The stadium record may not last beyond the first round, but Martinez himself hopes to go all the way to the final.
Like most boys growing up in the Dominican Republic, Martinez – the third youngest son of four siblings – first took up baseball, the country’s most popular sport, in his hometown of San Cristobal, 25km west of the capital Santo Domingo.
He carved his talent, hoping like many teenagers to make it to the Major League Baseball in the USA. He excelled with his speed as an outfielder and came close to joining an MLB organisation, but one day he was hit in his right wrist during a game and it affected his batting ability.
“At 21 years of age, I felt depressed knowing that my future as a baseball player was over,” said Martinez. “I moved to Santo Domingo for athletics. I trained there during the week and played baseball at home in San Cristobal on the weekends.
“My father wanted me to be a baseball player and he was initially sad because he did not want me to change sports. That’s why I did both during a period of time and kept working hard to help my family financially.”
At just 1.67m (5ft 6in) tall, his build did not impress local coaches and nobody wanted to commit to training him. He then ran into Cuban coach Yaseen Perez, a former sprinter and a guide runner who guided Adrian Iznaga to world and Paralympic medals in the 2000s.
“He was motivated to practice athletics and I told him that we could work together,” recalled Perez of their first encounter early in 2014. “He was jumping over some hurdles in just the second week of training. I was impressed by his natural power. I have rarely seen something like that, so I knew I had an unpolished diamond in front of me.”
In his first official race at a local meeting in June of 2014, Martinez clocked 10.68 into a -2.0m/s headwind. Later that day he improved to 10.60, also into a headwind, to finish second in the final.
A steady progress paved the way for his first international experience at the 2014 Central American and Caribbean Games in Mexico in November. He set personal bests of 10.35 and 10.29 to finish fourth in the 100m, just missing the bronze medal by one hundredth of a second. Three days later, he anchored the 4x100m team to a national record of 39.01 for silver.
“I didn’t know much about athletics, I didn’t even know how to lean forward at the finish line,” said Martinez. “I really enjoyed the Games, running the relay and winning silver with a national record.”

RACING BOLT
With a full year of training behind him, Martinez’s progress continued early in 2015. In his first 100m race of the season, he equalled the 22-year-old national record of 10.16. Later that day, he also broke the national 200m record with 20.37.
He went on to set four more national records at the Pan-American Games in Toronto two months later, clocking 10.14 in the 100m, 20.30 and 20.22 in the 200m and 38.67 in the 4x100m.
“It was a great experience being on the same team as Felix Sanchez and Luguelin Santos,” said Martinez, who finished seventh in the 200m in Toronto. “We took some photos together and I realised I could one day become a world-class athlete like them. Running with some of the world’s best athletes convinced me that I could run as fast, or faster, one day.”
Two weeks later, Martinez claimed his first international medal when he finished second in the 200m at the NACAC Senior Championships in San Jose, Costa Rica. “That medal motivated me a lot to keep working hard,” he said. But an even bigger experience was yet to come.
On his global championships debut at the IAAF World Championships Beijing 2015, Martinez was drawn in the same first-round heats as Usain Bolt in both the 100m and 200m.
“When I started to learn about the sport and got to know the big names like Usain Bolt, you always dream of running against one of them one day,” said Martinez, who went on to finish fourth in the semifinals of the 200m, narrowly missing a spot in the final. “It really made me happy and I had a chance to shake hands with him.”

RETURNING TO RIO
Martinez is happy with his accomplishments, but he remains grounded. “When I train, I focus on executing each part of the race,” he said. “I am not worried about the time. If you do things right, a good time will come up. I finish my races strong, but still need to work on my start.”
His coach believes Martinez has the potential to be among the world’s best.
“He is yet to develop all his capacity,” said Perez. “He is coming from baseball, so the volume is not as intense. We are taking it one step at a time to keep him healthy and to keep him around in the sport for many years.”
And he found more support from his mom when it came to switching to athletics from baseball. “My mom has supported me in all decisions I have made. My father wanted me to stick to baseball, but he is happy now. He told me, ‘You are a fighter and have made the difference in the family; keep fighting for your dreams’.