Legendary Cuban wrestler Mijain Lopez, the only athlete to have won five consecutive individual Olympic golds, on Thursday called for the Cuban sport to “open up” to the world to help recover its lost glory.
Sport in the communist-run nation was “going through a very difficult time” and needed to embrace sponsorship to retain talent, Lopez, 43, said in an interview in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
“I think we need to open up sport in Cuba,” he said at the COB Expo, a fair organized by the Brazilian Olympic Committee. “There needs to be a change.”
Photo: AFP
“International sport is a business. In sports, there are sponsors... and that development hasn’t reached Cuba, he said.
Asked if there was a need to professionalize Cuban sport, he said: “Yes, I think so.”
The start of a new Olympic cycle made it important to implement changes “soon,” he added.
A traditional powerhouse of Latin American sport, Cuba fared poorly at last year’s Paris Olympics.
Its tally of two gold medals, one silver, and six bronze medals was its lowest since its return to the athletics extravaganza in Barcelona in 1992, after boycotting the Los Angeles 1984 and Seoul 1988 events. Barcelona was where Team Cuba peaked, bringing home 14 gold, six silver and 11 bronze medals.
“We’ve lost a lot of talent,” Lopez said, citing defections from the Caribbean island and deteriorating conditions at state-run training centers as contributing factors.
He insisted that he himself never considered defecting to the West over the course of his 32-year-career.
“I never had any doubts ... I always had the mentality that I was going to win a medal for the people of Cuba.”
The 1.96m colossus from Herradura in western Cuba made history when he defeated Chilean-Cuban rival Yasmani Acosta in the Greco-Roman heavyweight wrestling final in Paris.
The man nicknamed “El Terrible” for his intimidating physique received a standing ovation, then knelt and left his shoes on the mat — a tradition for retiring wrestlers.
In Sao Paulo, he rejected rumors that he was considering emerging from retirement to compete in the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
“Sport is beautiful, but it’s wise to know when to leave,” said Lopez, a suited ambassador for United World Wrestling, the governing body of amateur wrestling.
The Rakuten Monkeys on Sunday downed the CTBC Brothers 2-1, handing the hosts their second consecutive loss in the best-of-seven CPBL Taiwan Series at the Taipei Dome. Monkeys’ ace starter Pedro Fernandez of the Dominican Republic dominated on the mound, cruising through six scoreless innings before giving up a run on a wild pitch in the bottom of the seventh inning. He gave up only three hits and walked two batters in a 93-pitch outing, giving his Taoyuan-based team an edge. Offensively, the Monkeys’ leadoff batter Lin Li hit Brothers starter Brandon Leibrandt’s pitch over the center-field wall in the game’s first at-bat,
The tiny village club of Mjallby AIF on Monday won the top tier Swedish soccer league with a 2-0 away win at IFK Gothenburg, sealing the title with three rounds of matches remaining. Jacob Bergstrom and Tom Pettersson scored the goals in Mjallby’s 20th win in 27 league games. Mjallby has a population of fewer than 1,400 people and plays in an outdated 6,000-seat stadium with stands weathered by the winds of the Baltic Sea. “It’s a huge relief to experience this now, a relief with three games to go,” said Anders Torstensson, a former army officer and secondary-school teacher who coaches the
Jahmyr Gibbs was offered oxygen on the bench after a 78-yard run. He turned it down. Clearly, he was not out of breath. Gibbs on Monday scored on a long sprint in the second quarter, a five-yard spinning plunge in the third and accounted for a career-high 218 yards from the scrimmage to lead the Detroit Lions in a 24-9 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “You felt like this was coming,” Detroit coach Dan Campbell said. “This has been building.” The Lions (5-2) bounced back from a loss as they have done flawlessly for nearly three years, extending their NFL-long streak of 51 games
Marco Bezzecchi yesterday demolished the Australian MotoGP lap record in setting the standard during second practice, becoming the first rider ever to dip below 1 minute, 27 seconds at Phillip Island. The Italian, who won the Indonesia sprint race two weeks ago before slamming into world champion Marc Marquez during the grand prix, blazed around the waterfront circuit in 1 minute, 26.580 seconds on his Aprilia. His time shattered the previous best of 1 minute, 27.246 seconds set by Jorge Martin in 2023. Not content with that, he then bettered it with a sizzling 1 minute, 26.492 seconds. That left Bezzecchi 0.291 seconds
RSS