Cuba aims at having over 20 track and field athletes in Tokyo Olympics

HAVANA, Cuba, May 20 (ACN) Yipsi Moreno, national commissioner of athletics, said in Havana that Cuba aspires to have over 20 qualified athletes in that sport for the Olympic Games in Tokyo, an event for which 17 athletes already have tickets.

We could be around 21 or 23, it should be around those numbers, and she mentioned among those who have real possibilities Lesyani Perez, in triple jump, and the discus thrower athlete Jorge Fernandez, Yipsi told the Cuban News Agency.

Likewise, the member of the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba said that Silinda Morales and Melany Matheus, both discus throwers, as well as sprinter Reynier Mena, join the list.

She also referred to the heptalonists Yorgelis Rodríguez and Adriana Rodríguez, winners of the Pan American Games of Toronto 2015 and Lima 2019, respectively, and who have yet to secure their place in the five rings.

About them, she pointed out that they could be in some individual events, although their first strong test will be in the Hypo-Meeting of Gotzis, in Austria, to be held on the 29th and 30th of this month, a tournament that brings together every year the best exponents of the heptathlon and decathlon, the latter modality for men.

So far, the Caribbean nation has secured 17 tickets to the summer event in the Japanese capital, in a group that includes, among others, long jumper Juan Miguel Echevarría, triple jumper Jordan Díaz, discus athletes Yaimé Pérez and Denia Caballero, pole vaulter Yarisley Silva, octagonist Rose Mary Almanza and high jumper Luis Enrique Zayas.

Of these athletes, Echevarría, Pérez, Caballero and Silva already know what it means to win a world title, although in the case of Juan Miguel, he won it in an indoor competition and was bronze outdoors.