Guantánamo.- Last year, three athletes born in Cuba but representing European countries swept the men’s Olympic triple jump podium — a discipline in which the Caribbean island has historically been a breeding ground for talent.
Cuba is the traditional powerhouse of Latin American athletics. Over its history, it has accumulated 15 medals in outdoor World Championships in triple jump — out of a total of 64 medals overall — along with three Olympic podium finishes.
At the Tokyo World Championships, where the women’s triple jump begins Tuesday and the men’s on Wednesday, the discipline once again represents one of Cuba’s greatest hopes. This mirrors the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, where Cuba’s delegation earned all of its medals (one silver and two bronze) through the triple jump.
So what allows Cuba to remain, against all odds, a school of excellence in this event?
First Stop: Moscow
A key figure in this legacy is Julio Bécquer Pino, now 84, widely regarded as the father of the Cuban school of jumps. He also served as technical director of Cuba’s national jumps program for two decades (1979–1999).
The story begins in the Soviet Union. In 1964, Bécquer arrived in Moscow to study Physical Education for five years, specializing in athletics — specifically the horizontal jumps (long jump and triple jump).
“Since we were the first Cubans there at the time, in Moscow, we had great privileges. They treated us incredibly well,” he recalled in an interview with AFP from Fuengirola, in southern Spain.
During those years, he worked closely with some of the sport’s biggest names, including Viktor Saneyev (three-time outdoor world record holder and three-time Olympic gold medalist), his coach Vitold Kreyer, and Leonid Shcherbakov, another world record holder and the 1952 Olympic silver medalist.
New Training Methods
“My stay in the Soviet Union gave me the chance to learn all the training systems, to study everything. When I returned to Cuba, Shcherbakov was already working as a coach there. He had been my professor, and we reunited,” Bécquer said.
The USSR-Cuba cooperation of the time facilitated the presence of top Soviet trainers, and the results came quickly.
Pedro Pérez Dueñas, a pupil of Shcherbakov, set the world record with a 17.40-meter jump at the 1971 Pan American Games in Cali. “We were there, and it was apotheosis, it shook the foundations of triple jump worldwide. That motivated me to deepen the work,” Bécquer recalled.
After another doctoral stay in the Soviet Union, he returned to Cuba and went on to lead the national jumps program for 20 years.
“We always remained closely tied to scientific approaches and the capacities of our athletes. At the time, Russian athletes relied heavily on absolute strength. I said Cubans could not produce that much brute force — but we had speed they didn’t have. We are strong sprinters. So we began focusing on explosive strength and velocity, on refining possible coordinations,” he explained.
More Success in Tokyo?
Over the past four decades, Cuban athletes have frequently appeared on international triple jump podiums, producing stars such as Yoelbi Quesada, Aliecer Urrutia, Yoandri Betanzos, Yamilé Aldama, and two-time world champion Yargelis Savigne, among many others.
At the Paris 2024 Olympics, three Cuban-born athletes shared the podium: Jordan Díaz (gold for Spain), Pedro Pablo Pichardo (silver for Portugal), and Andy Díaz (bronze for Italy). Though none represented Cuba, Bécquer said he was proud, calling them “successes of the Cuban system.”
The trio now promises another showdown at this World Championships. At the indoor World Championships in China last March, Andy Díaz already claimed gold, while competing for Cuba, Leyanis Pérez and Liadagmis Povea won gold and silver, respectively.
Pérez arrives in Tokyo as the season’s best performer, though she will face tough competition from Venezuela’s Yulimar Rojas, returning from injury and widely regarded as the greatest triple jumper in history — guided by none other than Cuban legend Iván Pedroso, who himself was a long jump star in his competitive days.
