In three years, Gregorio Salazar has managed to be in all the finals of the National Olympics that he has attended, in addition he has reached two medals in international Olympics.....

Gregorio Salazar, aged 16, is one of the few children that every year manages to pass the exhaustive selection to be part of the National Mathematics Olympiad organized by the Antonio Nariño University.

He is in ninth grade and at his young age he has participated in three of them, always reaching the final round. The mathematics  are for him his present and his future.

Young people who are put to the test in the National Olympics must first pass a qualifying round. "They are multiple choice responses that allow the exercise of intuition, follow the selective test with numerical response problems that require a complete solution process, and finally the final and final round with problems that require the student to reason , justify and write a complete solution ", they tell at the university.

Gregorio recognizes that he does not like calculators. At the same time he claims to have little agility to do accounts in the head. Even so, his ingenuity has led him to two international competitions: the Ibero-American Olympiad, which took place in Iguazú, Argentina  in September of the previous year, where he won a bronze medal, and the Central American Olympiad that made him worthy of the medal silver.

In addition, he blushes to remember that there have been many problems that have remained unresolved. However, Gregorio strives every day to go a step ahead of its competitors, says the paramount is to find new tools that help you solve exercises with pure mathematical logic.

"There are problems that are very difficult, there have been situations where 800 people only two have been able to solve exercises with very simple tools. I'm still not capable, but the idea is to get used to solving problems that I have never seen and that are of different difficulties, "he explains as he sits down in the desk chair where several sheets with scribbles are placed that only he knows how to recognize.

Gregorio's room is like that of a boy of his age, he loves football and his favorite team is Barcelona. But in this case, it has a different discipline to that of many, it wants to reach the International Mathematical Olympiad (IOM), the world cup of this discipline, a challenge that many aspire to and few manage to reach.

Gregorio admits with laughter that it was he who immersed his parents in this life of numbers and reasoning. They, for their part, have not hesitated a second to continue supporting that son that other colleagues, and rightly so, often call 'luminary'.