MIAMI, United States. – “Cuban athletes do not have any privileges. Just talent. I think the privilege is when you get to a national team, that you have a stipend,” he told CubaNet a Cuban athlete who dedicated himself for years to artistic gymnastics.
The former athlete, who chose to remain anonymous, said he felt “very disappointed” by the exodus of important Cuban sports figures, for which he blames the Island’s government.
“Here in this country they are not given support, they are not convinced with all that this entails from the economic level, from the family level, from the situations they have in life as people, so right now there is an emigration so strong of the top-level athletes in Cuba, who have spent their entire lives dedicated to sports and without seeing results,” lamented the former gymnast.
For the interviewee, “you always have the plan to seek stability, to be able to help your family. I think that the only way you achieve that, and the things you always dreamed of, is leaving the country here, ”he said.
“Many [deportistas] from now that they are leaving now young people have a future ahead of them. I think that the mentality of the Cuban is always to advance, shoot ahead. We are a town that has shown that, with all the problems it has, the hunger, the needs… Maybe at 40 you will get there [el extranjero] and you have to reconsider another job, but I think you are already convinced that your moment has passed and to work on whatever comes, just that ”, he assured.
Regarding being an athlete in Cuba, he pointed out that national athletes deserved the “medal of honor.”
“It is very difficult (…). You start very early and you have to separate yourself from the people you have always lived with – your mother, your father, your family – and make a life outside of that place, ”she explained.
“I can tell you that at that time that I started it was very difficult; he was very hungry. I remember that in my own school we spent 15 or 20 days eating tench and I didn’t eat fish. You can imagine 15 days with fish and 15 days without eating, eating potato balls and mushroom balls for breakfast and gouache”, he counted.
You can listen to the full interview here:
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