SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- The former Cuban sprinter Hermes RamirezOlympic runner-up in Mexico 68, died this Wednesday in Havana, according to his friend, sports journalist Julia Osendi.
Ramírez had been hospitalized for five days at the Calixto García hospital, due to a neurovascular accident that he was unable to overcome. He suffered three cardiac arrests that caused his death.
“Hermes had been hospitalized since last Saturday, first in the Cardiovascular Hospital and then in intensive care in the emergency room where he was treated by the neurology staff for a neurovascular accident that never subsided,” said Osendi.
The 76-year-old Guantanamo native was a pioneer of Cuban athletics and a member of a generation that includes figures such as Enrique Figuerola.
Ramírez participated in two Central American and Caribbean Games, three Pan American Games and three Olympic Games.
At the 1968 Games he equalled the Olympic record for the 100-metre dash by exactly 10 seconds, and his quartet in the relay was only surpassed by the United States.
“Although he could not advance beyond the semi-finals due to a sticky 40-degree fever that made it impossible for him, he was able to run the relays and in the final with 38.300 seconds (Hermes Ramírez, Juan Morales, Pablo Montes and Enrique Figuerola) escorted the United States to the podium with 38.200,” said the journalist.
“Mexico was my first Olympic experience, I was twenty years old. I went with great excitement, because my son had been born. We were lucky that every time we ran we improved our time, we broke the national record,” she said in an interview with Workers.
Once retired from active sport, Hermes dedicated himself to training the new generations, not without setbacks, as he was the victim of arbitrary decisions and saw Cuban athletics decline.
When he was head of the athletics department, a national commissioner prohibited him from going to the Pan American Games in Guadalajara. “If I am the head of the department that contributes the most to the team and I have the largest number of coaches for that event, how could I not go? It happened then that coaches of athletes with potential did not go and some people were lost in the field. They did not have schedules, and others were hesitating. These are things that you start to do the math on and say: ‘I’m leaving here’. It was crazy,” he admitted to the official press in an interview.
“There are many things I would not repeat, but without thinking twice I would repeat athletics and being a coach, although Not in Cuba, because I would suffer a lot”were his words to the official newspaper HIT.
