The cuban wrestling said goodbye this Saturday to the World Sports Championship, held in Belgrade, capital of Serbian.
This is the first time since 2013 that the largest of the Antilles has not been able to get on the podium in a wrestling world event, in any of its variants: Greco-Roman for men and free for both sexes.
The last hopes vanished on this day with the defeats of the freelancers Reineri Andreu (57 kg) and Alejandro Valdés (65 kg).
However, Andreu starred in the best performance for Cuba in the contest, finishing in fifth place in his division, after losing in the bronze dispute against the local Stevan Andria Micic, fifth in the world in 2019.
Reineris Andreu finished fifth in the World Cup #struggle#Cuba says goodbye to Belgrade 2022 without any medal. #wrestling https://t.co/IXNeBxNoJh pic.twitter.com/n63exEsFV7
— JIT Cuban Sport (@jit_digital) September 17, 2022
The Cuban, who yesterday had managed to advance to the playoffs, achieved a couple of victories this Saturday to get close to the podium.
First, he convincingly defeated Colombian Oscar Eduardo Tigreros, with a score of 10×0, and then came from behind to beat Uzbek Gulomjon Abdullaev 4×3, with less than a minute to go in the fight. This allowed him to face Micic, before whom he fell 1 × 7, according to review the website Cubadebate.
For his part, Alejandro Valdés opened his World Cup route with success due to superiority against the Chinese Shaohua Yuan, but then closed 4×5 in the round of 16 against the Indian Bajrang Bajrang, and failed to be included in the playoffs.
In this way, Cuba could not enter the medal table and its performance leaves a trail of concern for future tournaments, although now some of the main figures did not compete in Serbia, especially in Greco-Roman wrestling such as the multi-champion Mijaín López and the talented Daniel Gregorich, Oscar Pino, Gabriel Rosillo
Given this collective performance, in which the best results were fifth place for Andreu and access to the quarterfinals for Laura Herin and the Olympic monarch Luis Orta, Cubadebate considered that what has been done “forces us to look at the steps of a sport that was last year with few participations in extra-border tournaments.”
