MADRID, Spain.- Four Cuban karate fighters left the delegation with which they traveled to Guatemala to train for the Central American and Caribbean Games San Salvador 2023.
As confirmed by the sports media Play Off Magazine Y Full Swingthey are Sunilda Ventosa from Havana, Gerardo Almenares from Santiago and Darío Díaz and Yaidel Hernández from Cienfuegos.
These young people, along with five other athletes led by coach Eliecer Llamos, had traveled to the Guatemalan country on June 8. The training sessions, in the cities of Escuintla and Mazatenango, were to end on June 20.
To participate in this event, the Cuban authorities had not covered the expenses, but the Executive Committee of the Guatemalan Olympic Committee had allocated 86,458.38 Q (Guatemalan quetzal), equivalent to 11,186.12 dollars, so that the Cubans could pay your travel insurance, tickets and food.
Complaints to the direction of Cuban karate
Just a few months ago, the former member of the national karate-do team Elisabeth Vassal denounced the situation suffered by those who practice this sport in Cuba.
“For a long time, generations of high-performance karate fighters, athletes with talent and special conditions, have been destroyed, either due to personal problems or simply because someone in the national team chair doesn’t like you or you. I wonder, are we looking for talent and exploiting potential or do we have to be submissive to achieve our dreams?
Vasallo also questioned: “How long do we have to be directed by a commission that does nothing for us, that does not look for ways to develop us, that is not capable of differentiating the personal from the professional? Do we have to continue to be repressed and represented by those who do not, who are not able to get something as simple as a room to hold events and that our children can see high-level competitions that serve as motivation?
Cuban athletes who have left delegations in recent times
Last May, the Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling champion (59 kg) in Rio 2016, Ismael Borrero, “defected” from the Cuban delegation with which he traveled to Acapulco, Mexico, where he would participate in the 2022 Pan American Wrestling Championship.
While in March the long jumper Lester Lescay He defected from the Cuban athletics delegation and stayed in Spain after his presentation in an indoor track event, held in Belgrade, Serbia.
In the same month the boxers Kevin Brown (67 kg) and Herich Ruiz (86 kg), left the national delegation during the Continental Championship held in Guayaquil, Ecuador; and the Olympic canoe champion in Tokyo 2020, Fernando Dayán Jorge, deserted the delegation with which he was traveling to Mexico to train.
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