María Espinoza

María Espinoza

Espinoza with her silver medal from the 2016 Summer Olympics
Personal information
Full name María del Rosario Espinoza
Nickname(s) Chayito[1]
Nationality  Mexico
Born (1987-11-27) November 27, 1987
La Brecha, Sinaloa, Mexico
Height 1.73 m (5 ft 8 in)[2]
Weight 70 kg (154 lb)
Sport
Sport Taekwondo

María del Rosario Espinoza, (born November 27, 1987 in La Brecha, Sinaloa) is a Mexican taekwondo practitioner.

Espinoza is one of the two women from Mexico that has won an Olympic gold medal, the other was Soraya Jiménez.[3]

Early life

Espinoza was born on 27 November 1987 in La Brecha, Sinaloa. Her father is a fisherman and mother a homemaker.[4] She began practicing taekwondo at age five.[4]

Career

Espinoza won her first international competition in taekwondo at the 2003 Pan American Youth Championship in Rio de Janeiro.[4] Later she participated in Open tournaments in Canada, France, and Germany.

She won the 2007 World Taekwondo Championships in Middleweight (–72 kg) category defeating Lee In-Jong and also won the gold medal at the 2007 Pan American Games in Heavyweight (+67 kg) winning over Brazilian Natália Falavigna.

She participated in +67 kg weight class in the 2008 Beijing starting with a victory over Tunisian Khaoula Ben Hamza by a score of 4-0, later she beat Swedish Karolina Kedzierska 4-2. In semifinals she qualified to the final defeating British former world champion and eventual Bronze medal winner Sarah Stevenson by 4-1 and culminate winning the gold medal passing over Norwegian Nina Solheim, earning the second gold for Mexico in the Olympics

In 2012, María returned to the Olympics in London. She carried the flag for Mexico during the Parade of Nations and won a bronze medal. In Rio 2016, Espinoza won a silver medal to become the first female Mexican athlete to earn an Olympic medal in three different Olympic Games, and the second Mexican athlete to earn Olympic medals in three consecutive editions.[5] She carried Mexico's flag at the closing ceremony in 2016.[6]

Military

Espinoza is a member of the Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional with the rank of cabo auxiliar de Educación Física y Deportes. Top athletes have joined the military for the stable income and access to the best training facilities. For the 2016 Rio Olympics, 21 of the 125 Mexican athletes were part of the military. Four of the five medals won at those games were won by military personnel (María Espinoza, Germán Sánchez, Ismael Hernández and Lupita González).[7]

References

Olympic Games
Preceded by
Paola Espinosa
Flagbearer for  Mexico
London 2012
Succeeded by
Daniela Campuzano
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/11/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.