“I have fulfilled my dream of joining the team of the great Iván Pedroso,” said the athlete himself, who has not competed since 2021
EFE (via 14ymedio), Madrid, 30 April 2024 — Cuban long jumper Juan Miguel Echevarría will compete for the Island again. The sports authorities, Jit reported on Monday, “welcomed the wish expressed by the Olympic long-jump runner-up. Given the absence of elements that disqualify him, his case will be added to the current reintegration policy for Cuban sports,” said National Commissioner Rolando Charró, without naming the 25-year-old athlete, the winner of the silver medal in Tokyo 2020 and indoor world champion in Birmingham (United Kingdom, 2018), and without clarifying where he currently resides.
“I have fulfilled my dream of joining the team of the great Iván Pedroso,” Echevarría himself said on his Facebook page, where he also thanked “my former coaches, to whom I am indebted for being here.” In the same publication he says he will begin working to “first achieve the score required for the Olympic Games in Paris 2024, with the desire to compete and continue to give victories to Cuba.”
Deporcuba reported on its social networks that the athlete was “now in Spain with Iván Pedroso to work for the Olympic dream on behalf of Cuba.” The Echevarría score, 8.68 meters, places him in twelfth place in the world ranking.
In July of last year, the specialized media announced that the Olympic medalist was looking for “a professional contract” in Portugal, where he would have arrived on an indeterminate date. Echevarría, who has not competed since 2021, asked in 2022 for his withdrawal from the sport in Cuba for “personal reasons” and rejoined in January 2023.
Echevarría’s departure from the Island coincided with the elimination by the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (Inder) of the controversial requirement of “repatriation” so that Cubans living abroad can represent the Island.
His return is vital in the midst of the severe crisis of Cuban sports, marked by escapes. Just last week, the judoka Magdiel Estrada fled the national delegation while it was in Brazil.
That desertion was added to those of soccer defender Lázaro Castro two weeks ago in Nicaragua, athletics champion Osmany Diversent in February and wrestlers Susana Martínez and Santiago “Santiaguito” Hernández that same month.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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