Jefferson Pérez

In the 2003 World Championships in Paris, France, Pérez also set the world best performance (as there are no world records in race walking) with 1:17:21 in the 20 km.

Pérez had fourth-place finishes in the 20 km walk at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia and the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

He also won the silver at the World Championships of Seville in 1999, and unprecedented golds at Paris in 2003, Helsinki in 2005, and Osaka in 2007 for his third straight world title, the only person that has been able to achieve that. In France he broke the world record and he received a financial bonus.

He won the gold medal at the 1996 Olympics, becoming the oldest-ever silver medal winner in the 20 km walk event. Following his win he embarked on a 459 km (285 mi) pilgrimage, walking, jogging and running from Quito's Franciscan cathedral to his hometown of Cuenca. In the 2008 Olympics he won silver in the same event. He announced his retirement from the sport at 2008.

Two years later, he won the Junior World title in Seoul, Korea, followed shortly by victories in South American and Pan-American open competitions. His crowning achievement in race-walking came with a gold medal at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996. He won a silver medal, his second medal, at the Beijing Olympic Games.

His first international achievement occurred when he won the bronze medal in the Junior World Cup of Athletics in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in 1990.

Jefferson Leonardo Pérez Quezada (born 1 July 1974) is an Ecuadorian retired race walker. He specialized in the 20 km event, in which he won the first two medals his country achieved in the Olympic Games.