Championes
Trainers, sneakers — the word Uruguay uses where Argentina says "zapatillas". The most reliable border test in Rioplatense Spanish.
Related lesson: Uruguayan Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
Ponete los championes que vamos caminando hasta la playa.
Put your trainers on, we're walking to the beach.
Sacate los championes antes de entrar, que está todo embarrado.
Take your trainers off before you come in, it is all muddy.
—¿Dónde compraste esas zapatillas? —Championes, bo. Acá les decimos championes.
'Where did you buy those trainers?' 'Championes, mate. Here we call them championes.'
What It Actually Means
A champión (almost always plural, championes) is a trainer: the soft rubber-soled shoe you run, play football or walk the rambla in. It is one of a small set of everyday objects that Uruguay names differently from Buenos Aires despite sharing everything else about the language, and because the object is so ordinary, the word gets said dozens of times a week. Say zapatillas in Montevideo and you will be understood immediately and corrected almost as fast.
Where It Comes From
From English champion, and the route is generally attributed to a brand of sports shoe sold in the region in the first half of the twentieth century, whose name became the common noun — the same path that gave Spanish gillette for a razor blade and curita for a plaster. The brand-to-noun account is the one every Uruguayan will give you; it is plausible and widely repeated, but not rigorously documented, so treat it as the standard story rather than a settled fact.
How Natives Use It
As a plain, neutral noun — this is not slang and carries no register. It appears in shop windows, school kit lists and newspaper ads. The singular un champión exists (for one shoe, or one model) but the plural is the citation form. Uruguay is not entirely alone here: parts of Paraguay and the Argentine littoral use it too, through the same Rioplatense trade routes, but Uruguay is where it is the default.
Common Pitfall
Do not take it abroad. Across the river and in Chile they are zapatillas; in Spain zapatillas or deportivas; in Mexico and most of Central America tenis; in Colombia tenis or guayos for the studded kind. And the English word “champion” is a false friend in reverse — a Uruguayan saying mis championes is talking about footwear, not about winning anything. See the Uruguayan Spanish survival guide for the rest of the objects that change name at the river.