14ymedio, Swing Completo, Havana, 14 October 2024 — “The facilities are in poor condition; there is a lack of equipment, specialized shoes, shortage of gyms and no competitions.” The Cuban Olympic champion in Barcelona 1992 and silver in Sydney 2000, Javier Sotomayor, expressed himself forcefully this Saturday in the WhatsApp group Athletics Without Borders about the current crisis of athletics on the Island.
“The future of Cuban athletics for me is in doubt,” said the athlete, who lives between Guadalajara, Spain, where his son trains, and Havana, where he runs a bar, the 2.45, named after the world record he set in 1993 in high jump. “We have established athletes and young people with a lot of talent, as well as trained coaches, but the infrastructure is not adequate, most of all at the base,” he stressed.
Sotomayor also regretted that there is no infrastructure on the Island for the discipline in which he excelled. “For the practice of technique, it is necessary from an early age to make corrections. That’s why they reach the national pre-selection with almost incorrigible defects.”
In the past Olympic Games in Paris, Luis Enrique Zayas could not overcome the high jump score of 2.27 meters established as a requirement by the organizers for the qualifying phase. At the end of his participation, he confessed that he had only had “ten weeks of training, the first even without being one hundred percent.”
The exodus is another of the problems that afflict Cuban sport, and athletics is no exception. The crisis was revealed last year by the national athletics commissioner Rolando Charroo, after the failure at the XIX World Championship in Budapest.
On that occasion, the official regretted the lack of “runners capable of sustaining themselves in the elite tests such as the 400 and 800 meters and the 100, 110 and 400 with fences, in which we have had proven success.”
The terrible conditions for the preparation of athletes has forced several to emigrate. One of those was Roger Valentín Iribarne, who in 2021 asked for leave for “lack of motivation.” He found in the Benfica club of Portugal the conditions for his sports development, and last July he won the gold medal in the 110 meter hurdles in the Diamond League held in Silesia, Poland.
Reynier Mena, like Valentín Iribarne, took refuge in the Benfica club. In one year in Portugal he improved his numbers. In July 2022, in La Chaux de Fonds, this sprinter went down from the 10-second barrier in the 100 flat meters with a score of 9.99 seconds, and in the 200 meters he recorded 19.63 seconds.
In Paris, the podium in the long jump event was dominated by Cubans in exile. Jordan Díaz, who represents Spain, took the gold. The silver and bronze went to Pedro Pablo Pichardo (Portugal), with 17.84, and to Andy Díaz (Italy), with 17.64.
In the absence of figures, the Cuban authorities had to “reinsert” the jumper Juan Miguel Echevarría with a view to the Olympics in the French capital. However, the Olympic runner-up in Tokyo 2020 was left out of Paris for not having appeared in any competition that allowed him to achieve the minimum score required to attend the event.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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