Cuban Rafael Alba, double world champion and Olympic bronze medalist, was left out of the podium at the XXV Guadalajara World Taekwondo Championship held in Guadalajara, Mexico.
He was the most likely contestant to win the gold medal in the +87 kg division. The man from Santiago won two fights and lost the third against Kazakh Haparov Ruslan, silver medalist in the Asian championship, held in 2018 in Viet Nam.
“He won the first fight, in the second he looked very good, but in the third he felt pain in one of his adductors and we preferred to stop the fight. He had won the initial time,” said Iván Fernández Quirós, president of the Cuban Taekwondo Federation.
Cuban Rafael Alba goes for gold in the World Taekwondo Championship
Last Saturday he had received the special award for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic medalist, awarded by World Taekwon.
Cuba has one man and two women left in the competition. For today, Friday, the departure to the stage of Tamara Robles (53 kg), champion of the Central American and Caribbean Games of Barranquilla 2018, has been announced.
Those who remain to compete are Akely Matos (54 kg) and Dalila Oneida Villamil (46 kg).
The other Cubans were eliminated.
