MIAMI, United States. – This March 7, the men’s water polo team learned that their scheduled trip to Portugal to participate in training sessions with the champion club of the water polo league of that European country had been suspended due to “disappearance” of the budget granted the Cuban team two months ago, according to denounced the polo player Raymel Álvarez on Facebook.
“Today, March 7, one day before the departure to Portugal, to a training base with the champion club of the Portuguese water polo league and with the national team of this country, we are informed that the trip will not be possible. , already with the visas approved and everything organized, because the budget granted to the men’s national water polo team magically disappeared two months ago,” explained Álvarez.
According to the young athlete, the situation has not only interrupted the preparation plans of the polo players, but it has taken away the possibility of showing their talent in Europe, where the most valuable and outstanding of this sport is located. According to Álvarez, this is the problem that “continues to deepen even more” in the men’s sector of Cuban water polo.
Since the early 2000s, several generations of polo players have been lost due to a lack of support and motivation from the highest sports authorities in Cuba. “We are 19 athletes who spend a whole year away from our loved ones, sacrificing ourselves, going through a thousand needs and the least we can receive from INDER It is support and that at the last minute he is not even able to give us ”, lamented Álvarez.
This situation has left polo players unable to train, and when given the opportunity, the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER) is dedicated to boycotting it, the polo player also denounced. “Who is to blame for all these problems? Why is this happening again? Where is INDER’s support when it is needed?” Álvarez wondered.
“How long will the mistreatment and psychological damage that they are causing to this team and this sport continue, since they practically have us without any motivation and with our spirits on the ground?” he added.
This is not the first time that Cuban polo players have suffered the rudeness of INDER. In March 2022 transcended that, three days before a qualifying tournament in Lima, Peru, prior to the 2022 Water Polo World League, INDER informed the members of the women’s water polo team that their participation in the event was canceled because the organization did not have the money to buy plane tickets.
However, after the complaints appeared on social networks, INDER bought the tickets at the last minute.
