Cali, a beautiful but chaotic city in the Cauca valley is hosting the 2021 edition of the U23 Pan American Games from 23 November to 11 December.

Today 1 December was the turn of the first walking event reserved to U20 men which took place, starting at 7:00 am, over the distance of 20,000m on track.

Today's at the Estadio Pascual Guerrero in Cali, which already saw a brilliant edition of the U18 World Championships in 2015, is certainly an unusual distance, at least in Europe, for the U20 category, even more so if you compete on the track, but the Southern American tradition gets this geographic area very often to compete over this distance.

Preview

There are 13 athletes who will give life to these Pan American Games reserved for Juniors.

For the statistics they are: two athletes from Peru, two athletes from Mexico, two athletes from Guatemala, two athletes from Ecuador, two athletes from Brazil, two athletes from Colombia, and finally an athlete from Costa Rica.

The best accreditation time is that of David Alexander Hurtado Espinosa (ECU) capable in the road distance in La Coruna on 5 June this year of an excellent 1:20:37 which is also the personal best of the athlete (while that on the distance on the track dates back of 26.5.2019 obtained in Lima, PER when he stopped the clock in 1:23:39.7h).

David Hurtado, who we remember second in the splendid arrival of the U20 World Championships in Tampere 2019, shoulder to shoulder with Zhang Hao (CHN) both accredited with 40:32.06 is also the main favorite of the Pan American Games. The only one who in theory could worry him is Jose Eduardo Ortiz Flores (GUA) who has a very similar personal best (1:20:43) obtained in Dudince (SVK) on March 20 of this year when among other things he has anchors set alo national record of Guatemala.

The race