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Despite being known as a soccer-loving nation on the world stage, the Republic of Peru, a Spanish-speaking country on the South American continent since the 1820s, has achieved Olympic glory thanks to its international shooters, who have collected a total of three medals in the Summer Games between 1948 and 1992. According to these results, unequivocally, the greatest Peruvian athlete is Edwin Vásquez Cam, Olympic gold medalist.

Edwin VasquezCamera

Edwin Vásquez Cam was born on July 28, 1922 in Lima, the capital of Peru. Encouraged by his father, who was a former shooter, he competed in various shooting contests in Lima and other Peruvian cities. Over the next several years, he spent several hours with his father, Mr. Gonzalo Vásquez, his trainer and best friend. In 1938, Edwin won a school championship, but that was just the beginning.

When Edwin was only 18 years old, he finished first in the Gildelmeister Cup, a traditional event in Lima, defeating many veteran athletes. Since then, Edwin’s ambition was to become one of the best shooters on Peruvian soil. The following year, he was crowned the “best shooter” in a major contest. In the late 1940s, Edwin won a gold at the Bolivarian Games at home after winning the continental tournaments.

With limited international experience, in 1948, Edwin Vasquez and his fellow athletes made a trip to compete in the United Kingdom Olympics. The South American delegation competed in seven sports: athletics, men’s basketball, boxing, cycling, fencing, shooting and weightlifting. In the British capital, on the other hand, nine shooters participated for Peru: Edwin, César Injoque, Raúl Valderrama, Wenceslao Salgado, Luis Mantilla, Froilán Tantalean, Enrique Mendizábal and the brothers Enrique and Guillermo Baldwin.

Peruvian champion Edwin Vásquez Cam became the first non-US/European shooter to win an Olympic title when he captured gold at the Games of the XIV Olympiad in London, the UK capital. On that day, August 2, 1948, surprisingly, the Swedish shooter Torsten Ullman was defeated by Mr. Vasquez Cam. Ullman, a gold medalist at the 1936 Olympics and a four-time world champion (1933, 1935, 1937 and 1947), had been the favorite to win gold in the free pistol at the Olympic Shooting Championships, a sporting event traditionally dominated by the United States and Western Europe since its inclusion in the First Games in 1896.

Edwin won with 545 points, followed by Swiss Rudolph Schnyder (silver medal) and Ullman (bronze), both with 539 points. It was a day of national pride not only for Peru but also for the continent. Following Vásquez’s victory, the country became one of the first five Latin American republics to win an Olympic gold medal in the 20th century, along with Cuba, Uruguay, Argentina and Mexico. But within a few years he was forgotten despite his status as an Olympic winner.

Peru did not win another Olympic medal until 1984 when Edwin Vásquez’s successor, Francisco – known as “Pancho” – Boza surprisingly finished runner-up at the Los Angeles Olympics. Before the international Games, he had been trained by Konrad Wirnhier, a 1972 Olympic gold medalist, in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Pan American Champion

Mr. Vásquez, by winning the world title in Great Britain, helped his country’s Olympic team win a gold medal at the 1951 Pan American Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a world-class competition in the Western Hemisphere. In addition to these awards, he has also won many international competitions.

Despite being one of the highest profile athletes in Latin America and the Caribbean at the time, sadly Mr. Vásquez and other members of the Peruvian squad, including Julia Sánchez Deze (1951 Pan American gold medalist), did not they were able to go to Helsinki (Finland) to participate in the 1952 Olympiad. For absurd reasons, the then Peruvian dictator Manuel Odría refused to send a national delegation to Scandinavia.

An unknown Olympic champion

Historically, Peruvian Olympic champion Edwin Vásquez is the only shooter from Latin America to have won an Olympic gold medal. In the last sixty years, the continent has sent some notable shooters to the international Games, but none of them have captured Olympic glory. From 1972 to 1984, Helmut Bellingrodt -Colombia’s most outstanding athlete in 1974- won two silvers. Meanwhile, Mexican Olegario Vásquez, by winning a gold medal at the 1975 Pan American Games and setting a new world record, failed to win Olympic competition at the 1976 Montreal Games. By 1988, Alfonso de Iruarrizaga of Chile finished second in the Asian Olympiad. In the 25th Olympiad in 1992, the Peruvian athlete Juan Giha, whose coach Bruno Sarti did not go to Spain due to lack of resources, came in second place.

Despite being the greatest Peruvian Olympian in the history of sports in this country, Edwin Vásquez Cam, unfortunately, remains an unknown sports figure for millions of Peruvians. On March 9, 1993 he sadly passed away. Ironically, his death went largely unnoticed by the national media. In a country that has not had an Olympic champion since 1948 and never world champions, he must be an important role model for the boys and girls of Peru, paving the way for a new generation of champions.

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