HAVANA, Cuba.- The new auction semi-annual Olympic medal of the well-known Boston house “RR Auction” is offering four other Olympic medals from Cuban athletes, among which the gold medal won by the boxer stands out. Yuriorkis Gamboa in the 51 kg category during the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.
Among the medals Also on sale from the “revolutionary era” are the silver medals won by players of the Cuban baseball team at the Sydney 2000 and Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
There are two awards in competition at the Chinese event. In none of the cases are the names of the athletes, original owners, mentioned. Generally the prizes are presented in the bidding through collectors.
The purchase estimate for Gamboa’s gold medal is estimated at $15,000 by the time the auction comes to a close on January 16. This Thursday there were five offers of $1,465.
“RR Auction” remember that the men’s flyweight boxing competition in Athens 2004 was won by the Cuban, who defeated the Frenchman Jerome Thomas in the final.
After this Olympic victory, “El Ciclón de Guantánamo” won a bronze in the featherweight division at the 2005 World Championships, and later captured the World Boxing Association (WBA) title from 2009 to 2011, and the of the International Boxing Federation (IBF) from 2010 to 2011.
Yuriorkis Gamboa and an “incident” in Cuba
Gamboa, who turned 43 last Monday, December 23, was also champion of the 2003 Pan American Games in Santo Domingo, four-time national title holder and champion of the World Team Cup in 2005 and 2006.
As a professional in the United States, he turned out four times champion of the world in three different divisions.
Two years after his historic Olympic title, in December 2006, he decided to escape from the Cuban delegation along with Odlanier Solís and Yan Barthelemy – also champions in Athens – during a training camp in Venezuela. They headed to Colombia and then to Germany where they requested visas to enter the United States.
Before completing his escape, Gamboa confessed that he had sold his Olympic gold medal to support his family.
Once his eight-year ban on visiting Cuba has expired, the Guantanamo champion’s trips to the island have been frequent.
On December 31, 2022, he ran over a pedestrian – who ultimately died – while driving a rented car from Santiago de Cuba to his native province.
Last August, 18 months after his fatal accident, Gamboa himself announced on his social networks from Cuba that he had been acquitted. Since March 1, 2023, the former world champion was free on bail.
Throughout his career he has obtained 105 victories in 127 fights, 35 of them by knockout.
As an amateur, at the level of the old AIBA, he triumphed 75 times with 17 defeats, while among the rented he has 30 victories, 18 by KO, against 5 setbacks. Despite his age, disappointing performances in recent times and the uncertainty that surrounds him in recent months, Gamboa has not announced his retirement from the ring.
Cuban medals up for auction
“RR Auction” has put on auction 39 medals within its almost 400 lots of Olympic souvenirs and its offering highlights a gold medal for first place in the 110 hurdles at the 1904 San Luis Olympic Games. These were the first in which gold, silver medals were awarded and bronze. The American Frederic Schule was the winner of that test with 16.0 seconds. The auction of his medal is estimated at $150,000.
The bidding also includes a medal, this one bronze, from the recent Paris Olympic Games held last summer. The award corresponds to the women’s wrestling tournament and the metal is valued at $30,000 but the winner of the tournament is not identified.
The athletes who won bronze in that tournament came from China (three athletes), Japan (two), North Korea, USA, Kyrgyzstan, Norway, Turkey, Colombia and Cuba.
The silver medal of the Cuban team from Sydney 2000 shows wear and significant tarnish throughout its entire length, typical of those medals from the Australian event. Its sale is estimated at $8,000 but this Thursday the offers received barely exceeded $500.
Cuba lost two games in that competition: one in the qualifiers against the Netherlands 4 to 2, and the other in the final with the United States 4 to 0, which was led by veteran Tom Lasorda, while the Cubans were under the direction of Servio Borges.
“The star of the team, José Contreras, defected from the country two years later to play in the Major Leagues,” remembered RR Auction.
From the 2008 Beijing baseball tournament there are two silver medals from the Cuban team led by Antonio Pacheco. It is expected that one could sell for $10,000 and the other for $12,000.
It is not clear if any of these baseball medals are among those that were not auctioned last July when five Cuban medals were offered, including the only Olympic taekwondo gold won by Ángel Valodia Matos in Sydney, sold for more than $51,000.
Cuban athletes have been selling medals for several decades, albeit stealthily, to avoid the “ideological repercussion” of their actions. Neither the Cuban authorities nor its official press have made public criticism of the already numerous cases.
Last January, six other Olympic medals, led by boxer Roniel Iglesias’ gold medal won in London 2012 in the light welterweight category, were auctioned at the Boston home. The man from Pinar del Río had already seen his Tokyo 2020 gold medal auctioned in January 2023. They sold for more than $83,000 each.
