14ymedio, Havana, 16 December 2023 — Five Cuban athletes from the women’s youth handball team, which was in Mexico for the World Championship, left the delegation this Friday. With them, the number of athletes who have abandoned the Island’s representation at international events during 2023 rises to 75.
According to journalist Francys Romero on Facebook, the athletes were Nadira Mesa, Daniella Chávez, Sol Perelló, Reina Ramos and Naila Borrero, members of the Cuban team in the Pre-World Championship of the International Handball Federation for North America and the Caribbean, which took place in Mexico City between December 9 and 13.
This event was held as a qualifying stage for the intercontinental event that will take place in North Macedonia in 2024. During the third day of the competition, Cuba defeated the Mexican team, but Mexico won the contest.
The escape of these athletes adds to a long stampede of Cuban athletes who see official trips abroad as a safe and economical way to leave the country in search of better work and economic options.
During the last month of November, 14ymedio reported the escape of 21 of the 412 members of the Cuban delegation that attended the Pan American Games in Santiago de Chile
During the last month of November, 14ymedio reported the escape of 21 of the 412 members of the Cuban delegation that attended the Pan American Games in Santiago de Chile, including six hockey players, a basketball player, a hurdler, three rowers and five athletes whose specialties are unknown.
In the July-September quarter of this year, the escape of nine judokas was reported, including the bronze medalist in the World Judo Championship Budapest (2017), Kaliema Antomarchi.
In the Round Table program on Cuban Television, José Antonio Miranda, general director of High Performance of the National Institute of Sport, Physical Education and Recreation (Inder) said that up to September 2023, 191 athletes had ended their relationship with the sports authorities.
The number of athletes who have fled from Cuba in the last decade comes to 1,053. Among the most recent names on the list are the taekwondoka Yamitsi Carbonell, the rower Boris Luis Guerra and the baseball player Miguel Flores, as well as the 2022 youth world runner-up and bronze medalist at the Central American Games in weightlifting, Elizabeth Reyes Entenza.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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