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.
Another budding star that the island's sports system lost, in 2023, is the best female volleyball player in the world, Melissa Vargas, who debuted with the island's national team at the age of 13. At that time experts predicted a brilliant professional career for Vargas, who as dubbed a volleyball "prodigy."
The Cienfuegos woman suffered a shoulder injury that worsened over time. She ended up in the operating room in 2016. After her recovery, her parents did not accept the terms of the state-run Cuban Volleyball Federation (FCV) and decided to take her out of the National School and back to their city.
The FCV considered her attitude an infraction and, as of January 2017, applied a sanction that entailed placing her in a lower category and prohibiting her from playing at international championships.
A year later, after having left Cuba, the young volleyball player signed a multi-year contract with the Swiss club Volero Zurich, without the FCV's mediation.
Vargas obtained Turkish nationality in 2021 and was called up to the national team in 2023. She was key to the Turks' title in the League of Nations and, on an individual level, was named Most Valuable Player (MVP). Less than two months later, history repeated itself at the European Championship. Turkey prevailed and Melissa was named MVP.
The Portuguese made Cuban triple jumper Pedro Pablo Pichardo a citizen. In Tokyo in 2020 he turned in the best track and field performance by an athlete born in Cuba. In 2022, in Eugene, Oregon, he was world champion, while the Cuban squad went home without any medals. In 2018 Pichardo told the AFP agency that when he trained in Cuba "I used to sleep on the ground, in the stands of the stadium. They gave me some bread and coffee."
For this athlete, abandoning the island's sports system did not mean becoming a millionaire, but rather training and eating with dignity.
If the authorities of a country are unable to provide their athletes with the most elementary levels of accommodations, food and training, they must give up on them representing them in the international arena.
Cuba, racked by an economic crisis, has less and less to offer to the population, in general, and athletes, in particular. Therefore, it is shocking that the sports authorities would choose to discard athletes with great results (for example, a world record holder) who never even intended to abandon the country's sports system, and have even rejected offers of contracts and invitations and to leave official squads.
To cast off such athletes seems one of the stupidest decisions a country's sports authorities could ever make. This was, however, just what Cuba did with the javelin thrower Yulenmis Aguilar, the current world record holder in the under-20 category and a bronze medalist at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla 2018.
While representing Cuba, Aguilar was also injured. Unlike Pichardo, whose injury never properly healed (in his opinion due to the doctors who treated him on the Island, forcing him to miss Rio 2016 and convincing him to choose exile), Aguilar does not blame anyone for her injuries, and never thought about leaving the island.
Cuban sports authorities were not satisfied, however, with her bronze medal in Barranquilla, where the team finished with one of its worst historical performances in the Central American Games, and decided to let her go.
Six years later she is now a Spaniard, had the best throw of the season (63.90 meters), and will compete for her adopted homeland in Paris.