Central American and Caribbean Games pose a challenge from now

BY ENRIQUE MONTESINOS —Granma daily special correspondent

CARTAGENA.—Many colleagues asked me in the first week of the 20th Central American and Caribbean Games if I believed that Cuba would win in the end, thus registering their surprise at the unsuspected lead maintained by Mexico in the general medals table.

Independently of dissatisfaction with the negative results in some disciplines, I gave them all the same answer: that I had no doubt of that and argued that the first part of the program contained the sports in which we are currently presenting certain cracks for various reasons.

We were presuming that, like any other expert on regional sports, that when our powerful athletes in combat sports and athletics entered into action, the table would change dramatically.

What we have seen in Cartagena reflects the effort that certain countries have made in sports development. If we had been aware of that, we would not have dared to predict that in this same daily that the Cubans might gain as many as 200 medals, a goal that was logical if our fate is to constantly improve, and given that in the prior 1998 Maracaibo Games we won 191. This time the original program of competitions gave us opportunities in close to 100 additional meets, although in fact there were only 70, as a large number were suspended through the tactic of not registering for them, thus preventing the regulation quota of five countries, something that not very worthy in clean games, as was the case in rowing.

For example, giving priority to certain sports in the Olympic Games proportions confirmed dividends, but it is totally different when it concerns a world meet whose universality becomes huger with every edition and that covers so many disciplines, some of them very costly to our economy, but that lead to showers of medals.

We should also bear in mind that our Revolution has "spread" qualified trainers to a large part of the planet, and who are also present in this region (52, representing 8 countries) and we should be proud of our little grain of sand in that resurgence of sports, as it must constitute another reason for moving ahead.

In this city, athletics, the king of sports, was not the traditional distributor of medals, only 44, given that three disciplines were suspended, superceded by weightlifting (45), which introduced a women’s competition eight years ago in which the correct decision to participate came in this edition, but without results, as it was scheduled at the last minute, as was wrestling for women; although in terms of former judo specialists these came out better, with two champions.

Colombia dominated in weightlifting for the first time with Cuba present and also took off 20 in skating, an unprecedented fact for some here, ignoring that the Cuban weightlifters had won 30 golds in the men’s and the wrestlers had not lost one of their fights, for example.

Coincidentally, the anticipated rescaling of the Cuban delegation came on the 53rd anniversary of July 26, the Day of National Rebellion, the 12th day of a total of 16, when after a booty of 11 golds we could sleep that night with a margin of 85 to 83, although with an overall advantage for Mexicans and Venezuelans.

The onslaught of 42 medals of all colors on the penultimate day, Friday, July 28, took us to a definitive total superiority with 252 to Mexico’s 248 and Venezuela’s 240, although this medals league is atypical for the first time in the last 30 years.

In the farewells of Saturday and Sunday there was no lack of dissatisfaction over medals incredibly lost in collective sports, but we ended up above.

In the adjoining table everyone can evaluate whom to congratulate and whom to exhort to improve, although the latter is also valid for the former.