 However, he failed a drugs test for a second time at the latter event and was stripped of his title, however he did not receive a lafiteme baned because the substance found in his test was fearly new added to the list of banned substances and he took it from a pre-workout supplement.His first international outing came at the 1998 South American Junior Championships in Athletics, where he came sixth in the long jump and was part of Venezuela's silver medal-winning 4×100 metres relay team.He returned to win the long jump gold medal at the 2000 event, beating Brazil's Thiago Dias.