Evelyn Inga: “Kimberly García is an example, if she could, why not me” | INTERVIEW

In addition to Kimberly García, Gladys Tejada and Cristhian Pacheco, we must pay attention to Evelyn Inga, the national walker who has just finished top ten in the 35km of the athletics world championship and already has a place for Paris 2024.

On June 3, Evelyn achieved the minimum mark for the Olympic event in the 20km walk, the same day that Kimberly García also achieved the time. But Evelyn’s story has its own pages, those of maximum improvement, of first overcoming her own fears and then triumphing and becoming an Olympian for the first time.

“For me it has been a great satisfaction after a fairly disciplined job. Since the beginning of the year, the focus was that we had to secure a place because I was nowhere near qualifying for Tokyo, because they removed me from the ranking. That was my motivation,” reflects the marcher who lives in Huancayo, but she changed her training to Arequipa to fine-tune those details that she was missing.

Evelyn’s success is not only in having achieved the quota, but in how she got it. At the Gran Premio Cantones de La Coruña in Spain, she completed the 20km walk in 1:27.32, almost two minutes below the minimum mark, but above all with six minutes less than the best time she had herself. “It’s crazy to lower that time. At first you don’t assimilate it, but then I remembered that I have been in sports since I was twelve years old and I see that Evelyn fulfilling her dreams,” the athlete tells us.

And to become an Olympian she had to take big turns in her career. In 2022 she decided to leave her native Huancayo and move to Arequipa to refine her speed to better face the 20km walk. “It was quite a shock for me to go from 35 to 20, because I was afraid of 20 because of how fast it is. In the 35km she comes out calmer and after 10km she picks up the pace,” she tells us.

In Arequipa she worked with Alfredo Quispe and the sports competition with Mary Luz Andía helped her improve her speed. I had to do 4:27 or 4:28 (minutes) per kilometer to reach the 1:29 low or 1:28 high mark (in hours), but we did 1:27, which is a lot of faith and mind “, tells us.

Evelyn had to free herself from many defects and focus better on her sporting life to achieve these achievements. “Before, I didn’t really value what she did. In my house everything was the norm and until 2021 I had it together with the University,” she says about the way she approached sport. In addition, a health issue complicated her expectations. “I suffered from hypothyroidism and that has been an important factor because it is difficult for me to maintain my weight. Now I am more rigorous with my exams, before I was more undisciplined with it. We began to fine-tune those details and now I dedicate myself 24/7 to the sport,” she reveals about her health, key to what is coming in her future.

And he had to work a lot on the mental aspect as well. She was raised in a Christian home, she cared a lot about those around her without caring much about her own growth. She had to change that mentality in that regard. “Selfish is being something else, focus on yourself so you can fulfill your dreams,” her father told her. And that’s how Evelyn understood it. “I started taking time for myself. I am 25 years old and I feel that it is a great stage to start,” she explains.

She already had her new beginning with the classification for Paris 2024. And she had a revenge in the World Athletics Championships, where she was disqualified in the 20Km, but in the 35km she finished in sixth place, among the top walkers in the world in this distance that already It will not be carried out again by order of World Athletic.

“For me, the example is Kimberly García, who has managed to reach a good level. If she could, why couldn’t I?,” she tells us. Evelyn shared a room with Kimi at the last World Cup in Oregon and celebrated the gold medals they won with her. “It was, wow, seeing a colleague with whom I have lived for many years achieve everything was one of my motivations. Now I think we are not very far from that level,” she tells us.

-His story-

Evelyn’s beginnings in the march precisely had to do with Kimberly’s family. Her older sister was a friend of Mirna, Kimi’s cousin, and she was continually invited to train, but her family wouldn’t let her. It wasn’t until her sister was in fifth grade and already working that she was able to do so, but her mother set a condition for her. “You take her to your sister,” she told him. Evelyn was 12 years old and went to the Huancayo Stadium accompanying her sister.

“They gave us a test in 400 meters and I arrived together with my sister who was older. There the coach told me about competing in a children’s championship,” she tells us.

In one week she learned the walking technique and in another she trained for that tournament, where she placed third. Thus she began her steps in the sport. She grew up training alongside Leyde Guerra, Kimberly García and César Rodríguez until 2021 when each one took different paths in search of her own goals.

Now Evelyn seeks her own goals and hopes for the support of companies so she can continue growing. In fifteen days she will travel to Chile for the Pan American Games. She already knows what it’s like to face the best and now she goes as one of them, to prove her worth.

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