14ymedio, Havana, 5 October 2024 — Cubans Dayle Ojeda and Ayumi Leiva expose the reality of judo on the Island, the sport that has been awarded 37 medals (six gold, 15 silver and 16 bronze) in the Olympic Games. Only “the top figures travel” to international events, and Ojeda told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that she received a minimum wage and needed the help of her parents to survive in this very poor scenario. She only had two paths: “leave the country or leave the sport.”
Ojeda, a competitor in the 78 kilograms category, faced the phantom of the four-time Olympic champion (Tokyo 2020, Rio 2016, London 2012 and Beijing 2008), Idalys Ortiz. With Ortiz at the front, Ojeda had little chance of excelling. “There were no resources for anything; there was no way to develop a sports career, and I had no means to live.” That was the reality for the 31-year-old judoka.
The habanera was part of the team that between May 6 and July 26 supported the training of the athletes qualified for Paris 2024. However, she had a plane ticket to return to the Island on the same day of the opening ceremonies. Minutes before boarding she knew it was time to separate from the group.
“I was nervous, I looked back in case they followed me, I didn’t know what would happen,” she told El Mundo. Some friends picked her up at the airport; then she boarded a bus to Barcelona and stayed there a few days, before traveling to Valencia to meet Ayumi Leiva.
In her sporting career, Ojeda has won a national championship, two runners-up in the open Pan Americans of Varadero, in addition to participating in the Grand Slam of Paris and Dusseldorf. With these credentials she was received at the Specialized High Performance Center in Benimaclet, where Olympians Salva Cases and Tristani Mosakhlishvili Tato train.
The Cuban athlete has a place offered to her by the Valencian Judo Federation; in addition, they help her with living expenses and training material, but she urgently needs to compete and win. She knows that it would be a key point in her training to be able to obtain Spanish naturalization. “I would love to be able to go to the next Olympic Games and give back to Spain all the help it is giving me.”
The humiliations and threats led Ayumi Leiva to flee in 2022 from the Cuban judo team, while making a stopover in Madrid on her way to Cali (Colombia). “In my first junior competition, they forced me to sign a paper saying that I promise to come back with a medal,” she told the Spanish sports newspaper AS. “If I didn’t sign, they would kick me out of school,” she added.
The 22-year-old judoka reported that “the whole time (in Cuba), you had to put up with the mistreatment of the coaches.” As an athlete “you couldn’t have an opinion, you couldn’t ask for anything, they humiliated you; I endured, but I couldn’t stand it.”
Leiva separated from the group of judokas and asked for political asylum from the passport control police. Due to her condition and lack of money, she spent three months in a Red Cross facility. At that time she wrote to coaches Sugoi Uriarte and Laura Gómez and agreed to meet with them at the Benimaclet High Performance Center.
In July 2023, she was granted Spanish nationality. Since then she has won four medals in the 52 kilogram category: bronze in the Grand Slam of Antalya (Turkey), the Qazaqstan Barysy Grand Slam and the Madrid European Open, and silver in the Grand Prix of Zagreb. She has her sights set on the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, defending the flag of Spain.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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