Cuban sport brings together the first year of the Olympic cycle with contrasted sensations. On the one hand, young stars consolidated this 2025 in large competitions and exhibited an extraordinary potential to reign where they are proposed. However, beyond these individualities, the maltrews of the national athletic movement were noticed, also very beaten by the generalized crisis that the country is experiencing.
In the face of Los Angeles 2028 – although it is still very far on the horizon -, September gave us the opportunity to take the pulse of crucial disciplines in the aspirations of Cuba such as boxing, struggle, volleyball and athletics. The World Cup fever of all these sports placed us in front of a test scenario in which the results leave more doubts than certainties.
Triplet of podiums
Six finalists, a champion and two bronze medalists was the balance of the Antillean delegation in the Tokyo Athletics World Cup, where they were located in the 16th place of the ranking by medals and points.
Leyanis Pérez was the great leader of the team with her title in the triple jump, valid to break a streak without crowns that came from the 2019 Edition, when Yaimé Pérez rose to the top at the launch of the album.
The contributions of Lázaro Martínez (Triple) and Silinda Morales (Disco) with performances that allowed him to harvest two bronze medals were also transcendent. To that harvest were joined by Liadagmis Povea, fourth in the Triple, Mario Díaz, fifth on the album, and Roxana Gómez, sixth in the most impressive 400 -meter race that is remembered.
Precisely, the southern signed one of the two Cuban records that enrolled in the books during the contest, by stopping the chronometers in 49.48 seconds, to destroy the current brand, in the hands of the legendary Ana Fidelia Quirós since 1991.
The most notable is that several members of the delegation improved their personal records of the season or their careers, proof that they arrived at the event in good shape. Contrary to what had happened in other campaigns, there was a more accurate planning and most managed to overcome. Apart from the medals, this left a good feeling in a group of young athletes with margin to continue growing.
Shipwreck of the “flagship” in Liverpool
Cuban hopes of having at least a finalist in the World Boxing Championship in Liverpool vanished after Erislandy Álvarez (65 kilograms) and Alejandro Claro (50) were left out of the discussions of the crown in their respective divisions.
There was no balsamic closure for the so -called “flagship” of Cuban sport in English lands, where each of the eight exponents of the delegation fell little by little until only three bronze medalists were left.
From the qualitative point of view, this is the worst historical performance of the island, which had never run out of finalists in a global fight. If we go to the quantitative, it is the least amount of medals conquered in an appointment of the orb, matched with the 2011 Baku editions (two golds and one silver) and Yekaterinburg 2019 (a metal of each color).
Boxing World: Cuba, without gold bullets, signs its worst historical performance
“The nerve problem of the team is in the lack of international competitions. We raise it in all the preparation checks. The Cuban boxer is adapted to fighting a lot and now we went almost to our first event of the year,” accurate The coaches of the national team, Rolando Acebal, during an exchange with the journalist Pável Otero.
“At the time of the World Series we had 20 or 30 fights in six and now it is not so. When we arrived in Liverpool we realized that many athletes had a lot of rhythm, much fogueo. Three world cups have been held in Brazil, Kazakhstan and Poland and we have not been able to participate, and neither in other tournaments that have been held in Europe with 30 or 40 countries,” he said.
Fight: a ray of light and nothing more
“There are values, but you have to be careful. I pay a sos. Attention with the fight. I am not satisfied.” Those words by coach Raúl Trujillo, only three months ago in the podcast Asking for trackby Lilian Cid, they could seem somewhat alarmist, but he who knows, knows.
The stellar coach who led with surgical precision the last years of Mijaín López in the Olympic elite launched a notice that now has much more weight after the Cuban performance in the Zagreb World Cup, Croatia, where only a bronze medal was achieved.
Milaimys Marín, who a year ago stayed with the bronze in Paris 2024, now repeated on the podium and reaffirmed as one of the Cuban athletes with the greatest potential for the angels 2028. There will come in full competitive maturity with the dream of climbing a little more, but for now he has taken the first step trying to stabilize in the elite.
Beyond Marín, other stellar such as Gabriel Rosillo, Oscar Pino or Luis Alberto Orta could not advance until the discussion of the medals, although in the case of Orta he was clearly harmed by decisions of the judges.
Of the latest World Cups of the Cuban struggle (in any of its styles), this is the second worst harvest, only behind Belgrade 2022, where no medal was won.
After that bump, in the global LID of 2023 he turned to the podium and in the Olympic Games in Paris the performance was also remarkable, so perhaps, after this storm, the course can be corrected. Human material exists to achieve it.
Against the net
The Male Volleyball team came from reaching the final phase in the League of Nations and the expectations were high, but those led by Jesús Cruz crashed in the same first match of the World Cup in the Philippines against the weak cast of Portugal, 29 of the 29 of the ranking global.
That defeat in four partials conditioned the rest of the event, in which Cuba swept Colombia and then lost with the United States to fall eliminated in the group stage. Against the norths, to win, there was the possibility of cleaning the image and sneaking into the round of direct crosses, but they also failed when they depended on themselves.
After 14 years, Cuba wins again in a female volleyball World Cup
From all points of view, the performance of Cuba in the LID qualifies as disappointing, because everything pointed to a possible rebound in international results, driven by a generation of young players who has acquired prominence in demanding international leagues.
Also against the NET, the women’s team crashed in the World Cup in Thailand, although they at least got a victory in the appointment, something that the island did not achieve for 14 years. Directed by the Brazilian Luizomar Moura, the girls rescued a success against Serbia, a balm in the midst of the crisis to which women’s teams have been in this sport for more than a decade.
However, we must not launch crowns on the flight. The female volleyball is in a precarious situation from its base and without the same human potential of the masculine. Moura’s mission in this new stage at the head of the cast is loaded with challenges that pass through the almost total restructuring of the high mesh sport system on the island. A victory in a World Cup does not change the panorama …
