Cuban wrestlers aim to maintain golden road in Olympic Games

HAVANA, Cuba, Jul 16 (ACN) Cuba will attend with 12 wrestlers, including three women, to the upcoming Olympic Games in Tokyo, to be held from July 23 to August 8, with the commitment to maintain the chain of gold medals won by wrestling since Barcelona 1992.

Since that edition, Cuban athletes have won at least one title and in the upcoming summer event the goal can only be to add one or more crowns to that collection.

This has been ratified to the press on several occasions by Luis de la Portilla, national commissioner of that combat sport, aware of the potential and quality of the island's representatives.

They are convinced that it will be a tough challenge, but the preparation made will allow them to arrive in optimal shape, after a 2020 and the current year marked by the COVID-19, he pointed out.

Regarding the main options for the podium in the Olympic, Portilla mentioned Mijain Lopez, in the 130 kilograms (kg) Greco-Roman style, who will go in search of a feat never before achieved in that discipline, winning his fourth gold medal.

Referring to other medal possibilities, the director pointed out another wrestler, Ismael Borrero (67 kg), who will try to win his second gold medal at this level.

The two of them, he said, will carry the heaviest weight, but other gladiators of great quality who have a chance to be medalists, especially bronze medalists, cannot be ruled out.

In that group, the national commissioner included the freestyle athletes Alejandro Valdes (65 kg), Geandry Garzon (74 kg) and Reineris Salas (97 kg), all three of whom have been on the podium several times in universal competitions.

The young Greco-Roman Gabriel Rosillo (97 kg), champion of the Lima 2019 Pan American Games and world champion in the junior category that year should also earn medals, Portilla concluded.