Yipsi Moreno González (born November 19, 1980, in Camagüey) is a Cuban hammer thrower. She is a triple world champion and Olympic gold medalist, a former world junior record holder and current area record holder. In 2016, after the 2008 Olympic gold medallist Belarus athlete Aksana Miankova received a disqualification by IAAF, Moreno ostensibly became Olympic hammer throw champion for Cuba in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Early life and education At the age of 11, she was recruited by the Cerro Pelado Sports School in her hometown, where she started practicing shot put and discus throw. Hammer throw was not a regular women's event at the time, but following its introduction in Cuba in 1993, she eventually concentrated on this event and she earned a place on the national junior team in 1996. Athletics career 1997–2000 In 1997, Moreno won the Pan American Junior Championships in Havana with a throw of 55.74 metres, improving the two-year-old championship record with ten metres. She beat the second-place finisher Maureen Griffin by a 46 centimetre margin. This year she threw past the 60 metre mark for the first time, with 61.96 m. The next year, she finished fourth at the 1998 World Junior Championships, this time 29 centimetres behind Griffin. After the World Junior Championships, Moreno started working with a new coach Eladio Hernández, himself a former hammer thrower. The cooperation paid off almost immediately as Moreno established a new world junior record on 29 May 1999 with 66.34 metres at altitude in Mexico City. Later that year, she won the silver medal at the Pan American Games with 63.03 metres, only beaten by Dawn Ellerbe who threw 65.36. At the World Championships the same year her only valid throw measured 58.68 metres, giving her an eighteenth place in the final (there was no qualification round). At her next major competition, the 2000 Olympics, she improved to fourth place. 2001–2002 In 2001, she broke the 70 metre barrier for the first time, and improved her personal best to 70.65 metres as she won the World Championships in Edmonton. Three weeks later she won the silver medal at the 2001 Summer Universiade behind Manuela Montebrun of France, who had finished fifth in Edmonton. In 2002, she improved to 71.47 metres in Madrid in July. She was selected to represent the Americas at the 2002 World Cup held in the same city two