Cuba to compete with two judokas today at Grand Slam in Paris

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 2 (ACN) Cuban judokas Jonathan Charon and Orlando Polanco will compete today in the first day of the Grand Slam in Paris, a competition that awards points for the Olympic Games Paris 2024.

According to the site of the International Federation www.ijf.org, Charon, of the 60 kilograms (kg), and Polanco (66 kg) will be the two of the eight Cubans registered among the 621 athletes -365 men and 256 women- from 107 countries.

Rafael Manso, president and national commissioner, confirmed to the Cuban News Agency that Maylin del Toro (63 kg), Idelannis Gomez (70 kg) and Magdiel Estrada (73 kg) will also be representing Cuba this Saturday.

Lianet Cardona (78 kg), Ivan Silva (90 kg) and Andy Granda (+100 kg) will do it on Sunday, with stage at the Accor Arena in Paris.

The absence of Idalis Ortiz (+78 kg) in this competition is because she is still not in sporting shape, but she will join the rest of the tournaments scheduled during her stay in the training bases for women in Paris, and for men in Budapest.

All of them must compete in several Grand Slams (GS) and Grand Prix (GP), so after the Parisian tournament they will compete in the GS of Tashkent (March 1-3), the GP of Austria (March 8-10), the GS of Georgia (March 22-24) and the GP of Turkey (March 29-31).

According to the plan related to the bases, the women's and men's teams should return to Cuba on April 1 to compete in the Pan American Open in Varadero (April 4-5) and would return to France and Hungary in May to continue their preparation.