SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- The Matanzas native John Lefont set a world record for ball control this Sunday, during the III Gran Retto Open Water Crossing, held in the Varadero resort.
The former polo player ran 750 metres on Varadero beach, keeping the ball balanced on his head, setting a new world record, according to the official newspaper HIT.
On Saturday, Lefont also headed a ball 172 times in the training pool in this city. He thus surpassed his record of 167 touches, registered in 2018 in the Baraguá pool complex in the capital.
“I prepared well guided by my coach Jorge del Valle,” he told JIT Lefont. “The record of 167 was achieved in 2018 at the Baraguá Swimming Pool Complex in Havana, and we have been working hard to improve it now.”
The athlete stressed that Saturday’s attempt was his twelfth, as he has 10 approved by Guinness: “There is another one in the process and I hope that this one will also enter that phase in a few hours.”
In June, the man from Matanzas established a brand of heading a football, a sport performed in water.
The test was carried out in the pool of the Hotel Nacional de Cubawhere the athlete surpassed a record he had set himself: 1,958 consecutive touches of a football. In the new feat, he set a record of 2,031 head impacts.
According to what he declared to the press official, he spent almost six months in preparation, a training that was momentarily interrupted by a heel injury.
The “dolphin of Cuban soccer,” as some official media have called him, broke his first record on February 27, 2010, with 534 hits on a soccer ball. His second record was achieved on November 28 of that year, with 1,010 touches.
But it was not until two years later that he achieved his first record, approved by the Guinness commission. This was in the April 2012 test, when he hit the ball with his head 1,203 times.
In November 2022, he managed to maintain a total of 1,958 consecutive impacts without touching the bottom of the pool.
