Guyana’s men’s 4×100-metre relay team produced one of the country’s biggest athletics moments in decades on Friday, winning bronze at the 2026 South American Games while breaking a national record that had stood since 1975.
The quartet of Akeem Stewart, Onesi Dunn, Revon Williams and Shamar Horatio clocked 39.23 seconds in the final in Santa Fe, erasing the previous Guyanese record of 39.59 seconds set at the 1975 Pan American Games in Mexico City.
Colombia won the gold medal in 39.09 seconds, while Venezuela took silver in 39.14, leaving Guyana only 0.14 seconds behind the winners.
The performance capped a strong showing by Horatio, who had earlier secured bronze in the men’s 200m after running a personal-best 20.53 seconds.
Horatio’s 200m medal was itself significant, but his contribution to the relay delivered another podium finish for Guyana and helped rewrite a national record that had survived more than half a century.
Guyana also collected a bronze medal in taekwondo, where Ceili Peterson defeated Argentina’s Priscila Rodriguez 2-0 in the women’s under-49kg bronze-medal contest after losing her semifinal to Colombia’s Andrea Ramírez.
The athletics success comes as Guyana competes against some of South America’s strongest sporting nations at the Games.
The relay result provides another landmark achievement for Guyanese athletics and places a new benchmark of 39.23 seconds on the national record books.
