the cuban jumper Juan Miguel EchevarriaTokyo 2020 Olympic runner-up and indoor world champion in Birmingham 2018, returned to training at the Pan-American stadium in Havana after more than a year of inactivity and hopes to rejoin the national athletics team, reported this Wednesday Radio Havana Cuba (RHC).
The news the unveiled firstly the journalist Leonardo Ruiz from Play Off Magazine, and later it was confirmed by the coach Juan Gualberto Nápoles in an interview with RHC, in which he said that he is working with the jumper from Camagüey, absent from competitive stages since August 2021, for already 18 months.
«He has been training with me for about a week, but we have to wait, his official return must be authorized by the National Commission. I see him higher, he has grown. He maintains his abilities, although he is just starting out, he is an athlete who quickly takes shape in sports,” Nápoles specified in statements offered to journalist Raúl Rodríguez.
The coach, who already worked with Juan Miguel in his youth stage, explained that the athlete must go through a legal process for his official reinstatement in the Antillean team, which includes an authorization from the national commissioner, Rolando Charró, recently appointed in the position replacing Yipsi Moreno.
This process cannot be completed for a few weeks, since Charró is currently in Europe with the Cuban entourage that began its traditional winter tour. In addition to Juan Miguel, the new direction of Cuban athletics is managing the return to the national team of triple jumper Cristian Nápoles and sprinter Yoandy Lescay.
Echevarría has not competed since August 2, 2021, when he played in the final of the Tokyo Olympics. There he finished in second place behind the Greek Miltiadis Tentoglou, who overtook him in the last jump with a stretch of 8.41 meters. The man from Camagüey could not respond in that closing round due to a grade II injury in the femoral biceps of the right leg, which He had him away from the tracks until the beginning of 2022.
Precisely, in January of that year it transpired that Juan Miguel had signed a contract with the Spanish club CA Playas de Castellón, which would also be joined by Roxana Gómez, Liadagmis Povea and Rose Mary Almanza under the representation of the Cuban Federation. Under this rubric, Echevarría was training for some time in Europe, but without appearing in any event.
This fact raised doubts about his real sporting form, exacerbated later when the directors of Cuban athletics used “preparation strategies” as an argument to remove him from a national team of 40 athletes that traveled to the Ibero-American Championship in Alicante, in May 2022.
Just one month after that decision, Yipsi Moreno reported that Juan Miguel had requested his release of the national team due to personal problems, without elaborating much more on the matter. After all these events, not much more was known about the man from Camagüey, who did not choose to settle abroad and compete in professional clubs, a path that other exponents of the field and track did take, such as Jordan Díaz, Andy Díaz, Roger Iribarne and Reynier Mena. .
The probable return of Juan Miguel Echevarría to the national team would be the best possible news for Cuban athletics, which has lost a good part of its renowned figures in recent months. To the casualties of Jordan, Andy and Mena must be added those of Yarisley Silva (she retired and is currently pregnant) and Yaimé Pérez, who stayed in the United States after the World Cup in Oregon last year.
