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A 43-year-old bowling expert leads the delegation of 130 Guatemalans

Guatemala City, June 22. Four years after winning the silver medal at the Central American and Caribbean Games held in Barranquilla, the Guatemalan Sofía Rodríguez Granda returns to Colombia, this time to Valledupar, as head and flag bearer of a delegation of 130 ambitious athletes.

At 43 years old, Rodríguez Granda has an impeccable bowling career to the point that he is still the number one card of his country in this sport, which he has practiced since he was just 12.

His first participation in an Olympic cycle event occurred 25 years ago, at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg.

His first international achievement came 21 years earlier, at the World Games in the Japanese city of Akita, from which he emerged wearing the gold medal.

He won silver at the Santo Domingo 2003 Pan American Games. And he hasn’t stopped, nor has he shown any signs of wanting to do so.

After obtaining the gold medal in Barranquilla in 2018, Colombia reappears in the itinerary of the experienced player.

As of June 24, its objective will be 300 kilometers away, in Valledupar, site of the XIX version of the Bolivarian Games.

Guatemala will participate with a delegation of 130 athletes, 75 women and 55 men, who have an average age of 24 and will compete in 16 disciplines.

Rodríguez Granda, the most important bowling player of this century in her country, has been designated as the standard bearer alongside professional golfer José Toledo.

The Central American nation will be in the Bolivarian Games for the third time, after participating in the editions of Trujillo 2013 and Santa Marta 2017, where it won 18 and 20 gold medals, respectively.

The goal in Valledupar is to overcome these records.

Guatemala will have exponents in Valledupar in basketball, bowling, boxing, canoeing, equestrian, rhythmic gymnastics, golf, karate, artistic swimming, sailing, skating, rowing, softball, squash, shooting and archery.

Eighty-eight Guatemalans will debut in the Bolivarian Games and among the experienced ones who already have medals in previous editions, Jasmine Matta and Lucía Menéndez stand out, gold winners in 2017 in the pistol shooting modality.

They are joined by Allan Maldonado, who also won first place in karate at the 2017 Bolivarian Games, and Jean Pierre Brol, gold medalist in shooting that year.

The Guatemalan delegation is one of the four invited along with those from El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Paraguay. EFE

jcm/hbr

(photo)

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