HAVANA —
Three members of
Cuba’s athletics delegation at the World Championships in the
US, including former discus world champion Yaime Perez, absconded, the
country’s sports institute said on Wednesday.
اضافة اعلان
Defections by Cuban
sports people while on international duty are commonplace as the communist
nation has long prevented its athletes from turning professional.
Perez, 31, was the
defending champion in Eugene, where she finished seventh, and a bronze medalist
at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Javelin thrower
Yiselena Ballar, 19, and physiotherapist Carlos Gonzalez also disappeared.
The Jit online
newspaper for Cuba’s INDER sports institute described the defections as
“serious indiscipline”.
Both Perez and
Ballar are believed to have escaped during a stopover in Miami while on the
return journey to Cuba.
Cuba suffered its
worst ever result at an athletics world championships, failing to win a single
medal.
More than two dozen
Cuban sports people have defected this year alone, including Olympic long jump
silver medalist Juan Miguel Echevarria, Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling champion
Ismael Borrero, and Olympic sprint canoeing champion Fernando Dayan Jorge.
Last month, Olympic
boxing champion Andy Cruz, considered by many experts to be the finest Cuban
boxer of his generation, was caught trying to flee the island nation.
Cuba has slowly
been opening up to professional sport in a bid to discourage the defections.
In April, communist
authorities finally allowed boxers to take part in professional boxing
competitions, leading to a team match against Mexico, which the Cubans won 6-0
with five knockouts, even without Cruz.
Other sports such
as baseball have also embraced limited professionalism recently as in May Cuban
authorities reached an agreement with the sport’s international governing body,
the WBSC, to allow Cuban baseballers to manage their own professional contracts
with clubs in foreign leagues.
Cuba is suffering its worst recession in three decades,
partly provoked by the coronavirus pandemic and the ramping up of US sanctions
under former president Donald Trump, which has led to mass migration.
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