the recognized canoeist Serguey Torres Madrigal, Tokyo Olympic champion, leads the Cuban delegation that will compete at the Halifax World Championship in Canada at the beginning of August.
Along with Torres, the young Yarisleidis Cirilo and Katherin Nuevo, already international winners, will participate in the event, as well as the newcomers José Ramón Pelier and Tabiani Diéguez.
Serguey will compete in the C1-5000 and together with Diéguez in the C2-500, as advanced to the website Hit Alejandro Hamze, president of the Cuban federation of that sport.
#Cuba with five representatives to the World Cup #Rafting from Halifax #Canada The fight will be eliminatory for the Pan American Games of #Santiago2023 https://t.co/cW1xE5RncS pic.twitter.com/Xf2ZzmX26w
— JIT Cuban Sport (@jit_digital) July 28, 2022
In the previous world championship, Torres won the bronze medal in the C2-1000, the same modality in which he was crowned in the Japanese capital. In both cases, she shared the leading role with Fernando Dayán Jorge, who in March he left a delegation from the Island in Mexico and then went to the United States.
The absence of Fernando Dayán has forced the Cuban trainers to return Torres to the individual canoe and to look for alternatives in what until last year was the main boat on the Island.
This condition could now fall on the pair of Cirilo and Nuevo, winners of the bronze in the C2-500 in the last World Cup held in Copenhagen, Denmark, and of the title in the recent World Cup in Poznan, Poland. In the latter, both canoeists also won gold in the C2-200, a distance in which they were also titled at the Race World Cupin the Czech Republic.
Now in the World Championships, the girls will repeat both distances, while Cirilo will also row the C1-200 and the C1-5000. José Ramón Pelier, for his part, will compete in the single-seater at a thousand meters, Hit.
About the preparation, Hanze explained that the Cubans “did a recent training in the Colombian altitude and they are fine.” The federative added that “until they leave for Canada in the next few days they will continue their training at the La Coronela dam in Caimito.”
After the World Cup, the five canoeists will also take part in the qualifying event for the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games, which will be held at Lake Banook, also in Halifax, on August 11 and 12. In that contest, Cuba will also have a quartet of men and women in the kayak, according to the sports publication.
