Three Cubans on the triple jump podium at Paris 2024, and “the credit goes to other countries who trusted them more than their own. A joy, but what a shame for the country.”
14ymedio, Havana, 28 March 2025 — “You have no talent to be an athlete,” managers and coaches told triple jumper Andy Díaz in 2014 in Cuba. Then 19 years old, Díaz, from Havana, had come in fourth place in the U20 World Championship. “Many insisted that I was not good and would never get anywhere,” the naturalized Italian athlete told the sports newspaper Relevo. He won the bronze medal at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and, this year, the gold in the indoor world championship in Nanjing (China) and the European event in Apeldoorn (Netherlands).
Despite the constant ostracism suffered on the Island, the athlete says he never stopped believing in his abilities. Thus, he recalled that in 2015 he joined the national team and repeated being in fourth place in the World Cup of the U20 specialty. In those days the world champion and Olympic medalist Yoelbi Quesada was training him.
“I wanted to win an Olympic medal for Cuba, my country,” but the disdain of the federations led him to look for other horizons. “I knew that there [in Italy] it would be difficult, that I had to start from scratch, far, very far away,” he said about his decision.
His success in Paris 2024 not only earned Díaz the bronze but also gave evidence of the sports debacle on the Island. In the event, the three medals were taken by exiled Cuban triple jumpers: the gold went to Jordan Díaz representing Spain and the silver to Pedro Pablo Pichardo with Portugal.
“I hope the managers realize what they lost,” he said. “It’s a shame, but I don’t regret anything. Even if things hadn’t turned out well at a sports level, there were three Cubans there, and the credit goes to other countries that trusted us more than our own. It’s a joy, but what a shame for Cuba. In my case, I am happy to give that medal to Italy,” he stressed.
Díaz attended the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in discomfort. The regime knew that he was injured and still took him, counting on the fact that in some sports it is possible to participate with injuries. “You grit your teeth, and nothing happens.” However, his case was complex, and he was determined not to participate. “I didn’t want to and I couldn’t,” he said. The reality is that he had already planned to escape during his stay in Europe.
Back in Cuba, Andy Díaz took advantage of a stopover in Spain and ran away. He says that he decided to settle in Rome, because Italy is the most Latin country in Europe. “I had nothing and I lived on nothing,” he recalled. For a long time, he says, he questioned whether he had made the right decision. “It’s not easy to leave a country. I didn’t know if everything I was doing was right. My mother, my family and I, all crying. Then I thought there was no turning back. I couldn’t go back to Cuba for eight years,” and he still has five left.
Díaz asked for asylum. The documents arrived in mid-2022, but it took eight months to give him nationality. He mentioned that to be one of the first in line, he slept “on the street several times in front of the immigration office in Rome. Then they moved the office and I also went to the other side. I had to sleep nearby so as not to lose priority in the document appointments.”
While going through the procedure, Díaz contacted the Italian Fabrizio Donato, bronze medalist at the London Olympic Games (2012) and world gold indoor in Turin (2009), as well as European outdoor champion in Helsinki (2012). The athlete was fundamental in helping the Cuban achieve Italian nationality in February 2023.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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