Cuban Wrestling With No Time for Complacency

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Cuban Wrestling With No Time for Complacency
Fecha de publicación: 
3 February 2025
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The celebrations for having been correctly selected as the sport of the year in Cuba are still fresh, wrestling does not revel in the thousands of successes and has already charted its strategy for this first year of the new Olympic cycle with all the importance and commitment required to keep what has been achieved in 2024.

The Junior Pan American Games in Asunción (August) and the World Championship for seniors scheduled for Zagreb, Croatia (September), will be the two main events that Cuban wrestlers will have this year, but I think the main challenge is to achieve the rescue of our emblematic tournaments.

We are talking specifically about Granma-Cerro Pelado, the most important event for this discipline at home, and which throughout its history Dozens of Olympic and world champions from all geographies and styles have attended.

Due to the impacts of the pandemic, this traditional competition has been called off since 2020, and although apparently the results have not suffered too much, the wrestlers under the champions have felt it because this was the ideal scenario to encounter other ways of wrestling, since in the domestic competitions and the usual End of Year Gala it’s almost a domestic limit.

It’s now expected that in February the action will return to the mats in Varadero, but everything will be fine. It will also depend on the call, affected in recent years by the decline in international tourism.

Several representatives of the Greco-Roman team are already in China: Kevin de Armas (60 kg), Yosvani Peña (77 kg), Daniel Gregorich (87 kg) and the world champion in Budapest 2023 Gabriel Rosillo (87 kg), who plan to carry out an extensive training base for the Pan American Wrestling Championships in Monterrey, scheduled for May 8-11.

Let’s remember that Luis Orta (60) and Oscar Pino (130) were enrolled in the German Bundesliga, where the first had this weekend the return match of the grand finale with the ASV Schorndorf club, which fell narrowly in the first leg (13-16) although ours sportsmen won their individual fights.

Cuba is expected to attend several events of the Ranking Series, especially those in Croatia (February 5-9), Albania (February 26-March 2), Mongolia (May 29-June 1) and Hungary (July 17-20).

As for the Paraguayan youth event, they will have to look for tickets to the U-23 Pan American Games scheduled for Mexico from April 11-13, and then try to keep the place of honor achieved in the first edition of Cali-Valle 2021, in Colombia, where they swept the board with a balance of 15 medals, including nine golds.

Besides, the youth will have their usual world competition, in this case with a stage in the Serbian city of Novi Sad in October.

It’s clear that the discipline of tackles and throws is not resting placidly and intends to remain at the forefront of Cuban sport, even though the greatest of all times is no longer on the mats: the exceptional Mijaín López.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff

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