Jefferson Leonardo Pérez Quezada is a retired Ecuadorian race walker. He specialized in the 20 km event, in which he has won the only two medals his country has ever achieved in the Olympic Games. He won the gold medal at the 1996 Olympics, becoming the youngest-ever gold medal winner in the 20 km walk event. Following his win he embarked on a pilgrimage, walking, jogging and running from Quito's Franciscan cathedral to his hometown of Cuenca. In the 2008 Olympics he won the silver medal in the same competition at 34 years of age, before announcing his retirement from the sport. In the 2003 World Championships in Paris, France, Pérez also set the world best performance with 1:17:21 in the 20 km. Pérez had fourth-place finishes in the 20 km walk at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia and the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.
Personal life
Jefferson was born in El Vecino, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Cuenca, to Manuel Jesús Pérez and María Lucrecia Quezada. Like others in his neighborhood, his family was of limited economic means. He attended the elementary schools Eugenio Espejo and Gabriela Cevallos. Afterwards he entered the Francisco Febres Corderohigh school, at the same time working to help out his family.
The beginnings
He entered race-walking by accident. To prepare for a walk that served as a high school physical education exam, he asked his brother Fabián to train for one week next to the group of athletes directed by trainer Luis Muñoz. Muñoz decided to invite him to compete in a race. With few weeks of preparation he won the race AID, winning the right of representing Ecuador in New York City and London as a sport ambassador. Initially he participated in distance competitions of six kilometers. Later he had to make a radical decision, which was to dedicate himself completely to race walking. His first regional trophy in the 5K walk during the South American Pre-Junior championship held in his native city of Cuenca. His first international achievement occurred when he won the bronze medal in the Junior World Cup of Athletics in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in 1990. Two years later, he won the Junior World title in Seoul, Korea, followed shortly by victories in South American and Pan-American open competitions. His crowning achievement in race-walking came with a gold medal at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996. He won a silver medal, his second medal, at the Beijing Olympic Games. He also won the silver at the World Championships of Seville in 1999, and unprecedented golds at Paris in 2003, Helsinki in 2005, and Osaka in 2007 for his third straight world title, the only person that has been able to achieve that. In France he broke the world record and he received a financial bonus. Perez walked his final race at the World Race Walking Challenge final in Murcia, Spain. He finished third in that race and second in the overall challenge standings.
He appeared on Japanese TV show Hey! Spring of Trivia multiple times - in one episode, he tested how long it actually took to walk to a train station from an apartment advertised as "5 minutes away" ; in another, the show tested whether he would walk or run away when threatened.
