14ymedio, Havana, October 18, 2023 — The delegation of 382 Cubans who arrived in Santiago de Chile this Tuesday to compete in the Pan American Games will have to pluck up their courage to be successful in the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER) competition. Marked by the escapes of high-caliber athletes and with few representative figures, the sports authorities do not dare to set the bar too high. At the moment, they barely aspire to between 18 and 22 gold medals, 12 silver and more than 35 bronze medals.
“We would like to be able to talk about many more, but it would not be objective or sincere,” Ariel Sainz, vice president of INDER, admitted in statements to the official media Jit on October 2. According to the director, the desertions are reflected in the performance of each delegation during the competitions. “There are athletes who asked for leave and left the country with permission,” he added in an attempt to justify the bad situation of the sport on the Island.
“The desertions have hurt us a lot,” boxing coach Rolando Acebal told the AFP agency (AFP). “We have had many athletes of great quality who have left; it’s a reality.”
In terms of figures, the crisis is even more worrying. The same director acknowledged that, between January 2022 and October of this year, about 192 athletes left official delegations, and 34 of them “had commitments” with one of the 425 categories of the Santiago de Chile program.
We would like to be able to talk about many more medals, but it would not be objective or sincere
The hopes of achieving gold medals for the Island are reduced to the participation of Julio César la Cruz, Arlen López and Lázaro Álvarez in boxing; Luis Orta and Gabriel Rosillo in Greco-Roman wrestling; Yarislidis Cirilo in kayaking; Idalys Ortiz in judo; Leuris Pupo in shooting and Lázaro Martínez in athletics. They have all been Olympic or world champion medalists.
At age 34, Julio César La Cruz, in the 198-pound category, will book a ticket for Paris 2024 for a third gold in the Olympic Games, after obtaining gold in Tokyo 2020 and Rio de Janeiro 2016.
The Island, which authorized women’s boxing