Cuban student to attend Special Olympics in Germany

MINAS HARLEM, Cuba, Granma, Jan 10 (ACN) Cuban student Diliannys Simon Vazquez, a student from the province of Granma(eastern Cuba), will participate at the Special Olympics World Games, to be held June 17 to 25 in Berlin, Germany.

Simon Vazquez, an eighth grader, is 13 years old and will compete in athletics, in the 100 and 800 meters.

Although very sparing in communication due to her moderate mental retardation, she exchanged with the press during a brief break in training, and affirmed that she enjoys running and is proud to have won first place in the base and provincial level competitions.

Living in a countryside area, Diliannys got used to walking and running around the neighborhood, thus developing her lower limb muscles and aptitude for the sport, which coach Idalmis Salinas Castillo, who started working with her, discovered.
Now they are working on speed, flexibility and, in particular, endurance exercises, because the 800-meter race demands a lot of effort from the athlete, said Salinas Castillo.

As a relevant background, she recalled that, in 2015, three swimmers from the province were part of the Cuban representation at the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Los Angeles, United States, where they won two gold medals, an equal number of silver and one bronze, in addition to a fourth place.

Founded in 1968, this movement is the world's largest sports and humanitarian event for people with intellectual disabilities, and Cuba participated in it for the first time in 1983.