By Ronal Quiñones
HAVANA TIMES – This week Cuban sports authorities released the delegation’s predictions for the upcoming Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, and without shame they recognized the ruinous state in which the former continental power finds itself.
The poor results exhibited by the vast majority of Cuban athletes in recent times have forced us to abandon any type of optimism if we want to deserve any margin of credibility. That is why when it comes to predicting the performance of the Island’s athletes in the different international events, one thinks of figures that would have made Fidel Castro blush.
For the multidisciplinary event, scheduled between October 20 and November 5, Cuba is preparing a delegation of around 400 athletes, but more than half, 62 percent, have never participated in a Pan American Games, something that has never occurred in previous cycles.
Although the number of competitors is similar to that of previous events (420 went to Lima 2019), the forecast is to achieve only between 18 and 22 gold medals (33 four years ago), eight to 12 silver medals, and between 36 and 40 bronze medals.
That performance could place the Island between fifth and seventh place in the medal table, its worst in the history of this type of competition in the last 52 years.
I didn’t say that, it was said by the number two official at the Cuban Sports Institute (INDER), Vice President Ariel Sainz.
Since Cali, Colombia, in 1971, when it won 31 titles, Cuba rose to second place in the continental medal table only behind the United States, and that situation remained until Toronto 2015, including the historic first place in Havana 1991.
In the Canadian edition, Cuba fell to fourth place, with 36 titles, behind the United States, Canada and Brazil, and did worse four years later, dropping to fifth, with 33 gold medals, also surpassed by Mexico.
Well now things could be worse, because Colombia has been hot on its heels for a while, and it could be in Chile where Cuba’s position gets even worse.
Of course, in Inder, it is the United States blockade that is mainly responsible for the current disaster, because it is also the cause of the economic difficulties that the Island is going through. No mention of the poor government policies and even sports management itself on many occasions.
The growing exodus of athletes and coaches, which seems unstoppable especially in the last decade, is often caused by the displeasure of its protagonists because they do not feel adequately rewarded in relation to what they contribute.
According to the authorities themselves, between 2022 and so far in 2023, a total of 187 athletes left the Island, 33 of them were among the candidates for medals in the upcoming Games in Santiago, Chile.
Several cases, such as that of the boxer Yoenlis Hernandez, the best in the Cuban squad at present, are due to the constant failures in the delivery of cash prizes, which in this case were won by receiving blows, attributing the problem to the catch-all blockade. However, just a week after he left the team while returning after the World Championship in Tashkent, everything was miraculously resolved, and the money appeared to pay for what he had won in the previous event, two years ago, and which never arrived.
This is what happens in all sports that win cash prizes, and the only thing guaranteed is the salary of those contracted with a club, because that institution is in charge of disbursing the money.
In this panorama, there are also increasingly fewer athletes from the Island who shine internationally representing their country. Meanwhile, there are many athletes and coaches trained in Cuba who succeed elsewhere in disciplines such as baseball, boxing, athletics. and volleyball, among others.
In the case of the coaches, many of them strengthen the sporting potential of other nations in their field, whose athletes are precisely the ones who then deprive Cubans of the place to which they were accustomed for decades.
For this edition of the Pan American Games, Cuba will participate in only 54.5 percent of the events called (232 of 425 medal games, and 36 of the 60 disciplines), because some sports are not even practiced on the Island. If there is no budget for the traditional ones, there will be much less to enter these other modalities, some even Olympic ones such as surfing or climbing.
After presenting the devastating panorama came the usual tagline, that the delegation has a high “commitment” and will compete with dignity. At closing we will know how many prioritized their future over dignity.
In purely sporting terms, Cuba will once again depend on boxing, wrestling, judo, canoeing and cycling as its main disciplines, because they are the ones that Inder promotes thinking about the Olympic Games, which is what truly interests them to save. There are seven so-called “prioritized” disciplines, along with taekwondo (which for Chile will not have its main representative and therefore will not contribute) and athletics (totally impoverished). I don’t count baseball because it is neither Olympic nor is the budget set by Inder, but it is the highest in Cuban sports.
By the way, in Santiago de Chile direct tickets to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games will be granted in 18 sports, and 11 will give valid marks for the qualifying ranking for the Paris competition, so the best representatives of the region will be in competition, unlike previous editions where many nations did not send their best athletes.
So far, only nine Cubans have secured their tickets to Paris 2024 in wrestling, canoeing and shooting sports. There are still many to look for their classifications, but the amount of the delegation could continue to plummet.
Already this weekend, the failure of the men’s volleyball team, which would have been the only collective sport of the Caribbean nation in the City of Light, occurred in the pre-Olympic tournament of the discipline. Reaching the quota directly was the dream of a few optimists, but the best performance had to be given to remain in 11th place on the universal list, which also guaranteed presence in the Olympics, but Germany and Canada, which were behind, surprisingly achieved the direct pass and left the Cubans wanting.
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