José Mejía won the men's inline downhill world title at the 2026 World Skate Games in Asunción, leading a Colombian sweep of the podium after both top seeds fell early.
Top seeds out before the track dried
Race day opened with steady rain through morning warm-ups and the early heats on the one-kilometre descent of Cerro Lambaré. Riders had to read a surface that changed by the minute as the rain stopped and the asphalt dried. The knockout format wasted no time in breaking open.
Time trial champion Pablo Soler Cabañero and top seed Daniele Vecchi — the two fastest qualifiers from Friday — both went out in the round of 32. With the pre-race favourites gone, the draw swung wide for the Colombian team to take hold of the afternoon.
A sweep two years in the making
Mejía, Barrera and Quiroga moved through the bracket and shut out the rest of the field when it mattered most. France's Ambroise Nicolao finished fourth, the only rider to break the Colombian line on the podium. The federation called it a "histórico podio colombiano," and the numbers underwrite the word: three medals, one nation, one race.
For Mejía the gold rewrites a near-miss from the 2024 World Skate Games in Tortoreto. There he reached the final but tangled mid-race with Soler and missed the podium while Italy's Renato Pennuti took the title.
Colombia's downhill program had been climbing toward this result. In Asunción the men's sweep, paired with Alef Torres winning the women's downhill race on the same day, turned a strong programme into the dominant force on the hill.
The downhill crown moves from Europe to South America with a Colombian flag raised three times on one podium — a finish that needed no words, and left none.
