Over the past few years, elite Cuban athletes have been defecting in record-setting numbers. And if you think it’s all about money, think again. Never underestimate the stupidity of communism.
Cuban athletes end up competing under other flags, spurred not by money, but the authorities’ stupidity
The recent acquisition of Spanish nationality by Cuban javelin thrower Yulenmis Aguilar, who is scheduled to compete for a medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics under the Spanish flag, has once spotlighted Cuban-born athletes who have competed for other countries.
Given the fact that most of these athletes represent or have represented rich countries, it is easy (and convenient) to deduce that the Cuban sports system only loses athletes due to a lack of resources, and that those who abandon it are only driven by economic reasons. Several examples, however, demonstrate that, in addition to money, Cuba’s sports authorities lack common sense.
Another Cuban-born athlete, expected to make the Olympic podium in Paris 2024, wearing Spanish colors, is triple jumper Jordan Díaz, who told Runner’s World magazine in March 2022 that on the island he was “forced to compete while injured.” Was he exaggerating?
In January of that year his countryman and an athlete in the same discipline, Cristian Nápoles, told Cuba’s Play Off Magazine, an independent publication centered on sports, that the national commissioner of track and field at the time, Yipsi Moreno, expected athletes to compete injured, putting herself forward as an example to follow.
“She (Moreno) set an example of when she competed in an event with a bandaged ankle,” Naples said.
It was not until August 2022 (more than a year after Diaz abandoned a contingent in Spain) that Moreno was dismissed as national commissioner. She later said in an interview that the triple jumper was not improving his marks while in Cuba, but that since he had begun training in Spain he was showing remarkable progress. By that point, Díaz had already become the national record holder in his adopted homeland.
If he had not deserted in June 2021 —which meant foregoing his first Olympic games, in which he was poised to make the podium— perhaps Jordan Díaz would have ended up injured in Tokyo 2020, like several of his former teammates on the Cuban national track and field team.
Injury is a risk that athletes take in both tournaments and training, but it is striking that, in the games in the Japanese capital, six Cuban athletes were injured.
Triple jumper Andy Díaz and heptathlonist Yorgelis Rodríguez could not even compete as a result of the injuries they suffered at the beginning of the competition.
The other Cuban triple jumper name Díaz asked to be dropped from the national team shortly after the Olympics in Japan, and emigrated to Italy. Since settling in that country he has won the Diamond League twice in a row, and has the best world’s best mark in 2024.
What would Andy Diaz have accomplished if he had remained on the Cuban national track and field team? We will never know, but probably far less than what he achieved after emigrating.
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I have a cousin who came to the US at the age of 40. He was raised a “gusano” and was labeled as such in Cuba. He would always cheer for any team or individual that was competing against Cuba. I asked him why. He said it was because all of the athletes on a Cuban team are in cooperation with the communist government. Can even the governing elite in Cuba be proud of being Cuban? Can they be proud of what Cuba has become? Their only activity and victory is their never ending battle with the US. Thus, in a strange way the US still controls the Cuban government.
Are Cuban-Americans the only ones who are actually proud to be Cuban?
So does Cuba really even exists? Is not Cuba just a reflection of the CCP? The Cuba culture and even the language has been modified by 65 years of communism.
So yea, I imagine these elite athletes are very proud to be representing any other nation other than Cuba.