Guantanamo.- A total of five athletes from Guantanamo make up the delegation of 62 members who will represent Cuba at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, in France, from July 26 to August 11.
In the Guantanamo’s list appears as first the two times Olympic champion boxer Arlen López Cardona (80 kg), who will seek to grace the top step of Paris 2024 podium for the third time and thus join a selective club with such a result, in which Félix Savón from Guantanamo, Teófilo Stevenson from Las Tunas, and Laszlo Papp from Hungary appear, and he could now be accompanied by Julio Cesar La Cruz from Camagüey, who is going to Paris in search of the same triad.
The canoeist Yarisleidys Cirilo Duboys also has a great chance for winning a medal at the French multi-sport event, who in Tokyo 2020, when she was just making her debut, finished sixth and twelfth place in the C2- 500 meters and the C1- 200 meters, respectively, but now she is an almost certain candidate, as demonstrated, among other awards, by her four world medals, including two golds.
In that same sport, José Ramón Pelier Córdova from Baracoa (ninth in the Tokyo Olympics in the C1 1000 meters) will be an athlete to follow due to his growth in the world elite, evidenced by his stpeto the podium in different the world cups and Pan American events.
In the case of triple jumper Lázaro Martíntez Santrayll, the hopes of seeing him among the medalists are “lively”. In 2023 he was runner-up in his specialty at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, scoring 17.41 meters. Lázaro is currently third in the world ranking with 1,365 points, behind the Burkinabe Hugues Fabrice Zango and the Cuban nationalized Italian Andy Díaz.
The fifth native of the Cuban Upper East is the rower Yariulbis Cobas, who at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, ranked 15th in the single sculls. Now, her challenge is to improve her results; her presence in Paris is already a stimulus to her sacrifice and willingness to return to the elite.
There is the possibility that another athlete from Guantanamo will join the Cuban delegation, in this case Enis Magda Pérez, who has been part of the 4×100 women relay on several occasions, however the names of those who will finally be part of it for the Paris event have yet to be confirmed.
In the Tokyo 2020 Olympics – held a year later due to the COVID-19 pandemic – Cuba won seven gold medals, three silver and five bronze, placing it in 14th of the country’s standings, better performance than in Beijing 2008 (3-10-17), London 2012 (5-7-15) and Rio de Janeiro 2016 (5-2-4). Guantánamo on that occasion was represented by seven athletes, with Arlen López being the only one who won a medal, with his crown in the 81 kg (in 2016 he was champion in the 75 kg).
The province will be also represented by two athletes in the Paralympic Games that will take place from August 28 to September 8 in the city of the Seine River and the Eiffel Tower. They are Noralvis de las Heras Chivás (at that level it archives the bronzed metals from Athens 2004 in the F42-46 throwing event and from Rio de Janeiro 2016 in the discus throw) and the weightlifter Pablo Ramírez Martínez, a young man who has gradually improved his results in the 54 kg and this year he has won medals of all the colors in world events.
Translated by Liubis Balart
