Cuba at the Central American and Caribbean Games (XV)

With just over a year left for the 14th edition of the Central American and Caribbean Games, Cuba took over the hosting of the multisport event as an alternate, due to the impossibility of holding the event in the Puerto Rican city of Mayagüez.

From August 7 to 18, 1982, Havana hosted the event, for which the provinces of Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba also served as subsites, in an effort to maintain the quadrennial cycle of the event.

The number of 2,799 athletes was a record number of participants up to that time, representing 22 nations, as the British Virgin Islands and Grenada joined the event, while El Salvador and Honduras -due to the refusal of their governments- and Colombia were absent due to economic difficulties.

According to the late sports chronicler Enrique Montesinos in his book Los Juegos Regionales Más Antiguos (The Oldest Regional Games), 24 disciplines and 247 events were competed in that competition, a higher number than in previous versions.
The inclusion of table tennis, rowing, field field hockey, archery and Greco-Roman wrestling stood out as novelties, while candles returned after their exclusion from the Medellin 1978 competition calendar.

Likewise, javelinist Maria Caridad Colon, Olympic champion in Moscow 1980, became the first woman to carry the torch at the lighting of the cauldron, the ceremony that inaugurated the Central Caribbean Games.

Cuba's Hilda Ramirez's participation as a softball player stood out, after she won four gold medals, three silver medals and one bronze medal in five previous Games in the field of athletics, achieved in the shot put (2-2-0), javelin (2-1-0) and discus (0-0-1).
According to the historical summary, in this edition, the Central American Village did not have perimeter fences or divisions between the areas reserved for women and men, without any incident occurring as a result.

In the dispute for the baseball crown -another significant event- the local team lost to the Dominican Republic, while the water polo and men's volleyball teams of the largest of the Antilles won their fifth consecutive titles.

Local weightlifter Daniel Núñez set the first world record of the event in the 60 kilograms (kg) weightlifting with 292.5 kg.

Among the top accumulators of medals for the Cuban delegation were once again athletics (27-20-13), shooting (22-14-5), boxing (11-0-0) and judo (8-0-0).

The members of the gymnastics (15-11-2) and fencing (8-3-1) squads won all the gold medals in competition, with gymnast Orisel Martinez (four gold medals and two silver medals) and fencer Efigenio Favier, owner of three gold medals.
Leandro Peñalver shone on the track in the 100 and 200 meters (m) and in the 4x100m relay; while Luisa Ferrer did so in the 100 and 200 meters.

Colón reedited her Medellín crown, with a 62.80 m, and Ana Fidelia Quirot repeated her 1978 performance by climbing to the top of the podium in the 4x400 m relay.

Other individual standouts were table tennis players Madeleine Armas (three golds and a silver) and Raul Betancourt (2-2-0); shooters Miguel A. Valdes (4-1-0) and Tania Perez (3-1-1); and archers Irma Perez (4-2-0) and Maria E. Naranjo (3-1-1).

Cuba also dominated in wrestling (9-1-0), cycling (2-0-0-0) -which only took the road events-, basketball for both sexes, women's volleyball, men's field field hockey, rowing (7-0-1), table tennis (4-4-2), archery (7-6-5) and sailing (3-2-1).

Diving (2-1-1), swimming (1-6-3), synchronized swimming (1-2-0) and soccer (bronze) also won awards.

Montesinos added that weightlifters and freestyle athletes were victorious in all divisions, to accumulate 30 and 10 crowns, respectively.

The Caribbean island once again took the top spot in the ranking by country, with 173 gold medals, 71 silver medals and 38 bronze medals.
Mexico was second again in the medals table (29-55-47) and Venezuela (19-39-54) came in third.