Glenda Morejón

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

Morejón was born on 30 May 2000 in Ibarra, Ecuador. She was educated in Ibarra at the Tarquino Jaramillo School.^[2]

Morejón comes from a family of medium-low social status, her father Luis Morejón is a professional, in addition to helping with domestic chores, her mother María del Carmen Quiñónez works in the 24 de Mayo market in the city of Otavalo and her sister María Belén, who follows in her footsteps is a walker. At the age of thirteen, Morejón began to practice in the field of Olympic walks, along with the help of her coach Giovan Delgado a Guayaquil graduated in Physical Culture who works in the Educational Unit Ibarra and who lives in Ibarra since 1988, which also founded the Tarquino Jaramillo Athletic School in 2001, where she trains along with 24 other athletes.^[3]

With respect to her university education, the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja (UTPL) has awarded Morejón a sports scholarship that covers 70% of her first cycle tuition and will cover 90% of the total cost of tuition in all cycles of her Business Administration career in open and distance modality.^[4]

She won the World U18 Championships in the 5,000 meters (16,000 ft) category on 15 July 2017 at the Nyayo National Stadium in Nairobi, in the face of doubts of her ability because of inexperience and young age. She won with a time of 22:32:30, ahead of athletes Meryem Bekmez (Turkey) and Elvira Khasanova (Russia).^[5][6] Morejón is the second Ecuador athlete to win in the World Under 18 Champions, the first of which being Maribel Caicedo in 2015.^[7]

Despite her record of winning acclaim for Latin America, Morejón has had difficulty securing funding for her training or equipment. She trained with patched and holed shoes, drank tap water, and used aguapanela as an energizer. Despite a local campaign by Morejón's management, she had to go alone to Nairobi and with basic equipment. Ecuador's Ministry of Sport has denied funding for Morejón despite international protest.^[5][8]

On 5 May 2018, she won the silver medal in the World Championship held in Taicang, China.^[9]

On 8 June 2019, at a meet in La Coruña, Spain, Morejón produced what World Athletics described as one of the deepest 20 km race walk fields in history, finishing in 1:25:29 to defeat that year's reigning world champion, China's Yang Jiayu, by five seconds, in what was her debut at the distance. The performance was, at the time, the fastest ever recorded by an under-20 athlete and ranked 13th on the senior world all-time list.^[10] The mark remained the South American area record as of the 2025 World Athletics Championships, six years later.^[11]

That August, competing at the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha, Morejón finished 25th in the women's 20 km walk after fading in the second half of the race in difficult heat conditions. Reflecting on the result afterward, she said: "I was disappointed with my performance in Doha because I didn't reach my target of walking as fast as I wanted to. But it's part of sport and it's a learning experience." She was among the nominees for that year's World Athletics Rising Star Award.^[10]

Although she has won four international contests, she was as considered a substitute athlete for the 2020 Tokyo. However, in 2019, Morejón was promoted to the High Performance Plan, the Olympic competitor program from the Sport Secretary in Ecuador. She participated in the Women's 20 kilometres walk but didn't finish.^[12]

Morojón then trained for the Olympic games in Paris 2024 along with other Ecuadorian athletes, such as Alex Quiñonez, Neisi Dájomes, etc.^[13]

She finished 6th in the Women's 20km Race Walk and went on to earn a silver medal together with Brian Pintado at the Marathon Race Walk Relay Mixed at the 2024 Summer Olympics.^[12]

On 28 June 2026, Morejón won the silver medal in the inaugural half marathon walk at the 2026 Pan American Championships in Athletics in Medellín, Colombia, finishing in 1:35:44, one place and ten seconds behind Peru's Evelyn Inga and ahead of Mexico's Alejandra Ortega.^[14]