These are two of the three national teams with the most consistent results over the last ten years, along with Uzbekistan’s. The Eurasians’ visit to the island is a reflection of their respect for the technical level of the Cuban school of boxing, from which even our most seasoned adversaries know they can learn.

This collaboration gives continuity to the training plan designed by Cuban coaches in September, in the absence of national and international tournaments, due to the risks posed by COVID-19. In the, A great rivalry exists between members of the two teams in the 52, 57, 69, 75 and +91 kilogram divisions, which allows coaches to observe the principal technical shortcomings and strengths of their students in sparring bouts against experienced opponents with impressive endurance and skills in exchanging punches.

In addition, Cuba’s third and fourth ranked fighters, many of whom are under 23 years of age, have the opportunity to improve facing off against opponents who have won Olympic and world medals.

Alberto Puig de la Barca, president of the Cuban Boxing Federation, told Jit that both teams’ coaching staffs have expressed very positive opinions about the training sessions. A mini tournament was held to end the encounter between the two powerhouses that are studying each other carefully, both intent on taking the crown in Tokyo.

(Taken from Granma)

The statement has the effect of a gunshot in the middle of a concert.

How is it possible to spoil his style this way?

Does the President know anything about the human relations Maradona shared with Fidel and Chávez?

We Cubans know them very well, and thus we have the right to be offended.

We can start by clarifying that these relations were not “visits,” since the meetings were repeated over the course of many years, at any time of the day or night. Encounters during which the mutual admiration of brothers was evident cannot be described as visits.

All the images, words, statements inside and outside the country – many over a long period of time – are very well remembered and, since the death of the Argentinean star, of current interest around the world, where they are recalled as a testimony of an unconditional brotherhood, because Maradona not only identified with the causes of the humble inherent in any Revolution that respects itself, but also defended them until the last minute of his life.

Why then offend the memory of our number 10 and assert that these visits will leave a “bitter taste of defeat?”

Bitter taste for whom, and from what point of view?

Why recognize Maradona’s revolution only on the field and not beyond?

With the greatest respect for President Macron, we must remind him that there are plenty of examples related to these sincere friendships that will go down in history without idle comment, examples that – as Voltaire said – “correct much better than reprimands.”

(Taken From Granma)

In line with national policy intended to guarantee meeting the Cuban sports movement’s projections – especially in the Olympic cycle – and positioning our athletes in top-level competitions, the contracting of Cuban in professional leagues abroad remains a priority, but the performance achieved by our athletes has yet to be concretely expressed in Cuba’s international results.

Ariel Saínz, vice-president of Cuba’s Institute for Sports, Physical Education and recreation (Inder), announced in a recent press conference that 59 contracts have been signed during the 2020-2021 season, “which represents 39.3 % of what was planned, so we must make an effort in the rest of the campaign to meet our goal”. He added that work is underway to process contracts of six more athletes, among them baseball players Lázaro Blanco, Erisbel Arruebarruena and Yoanni Yera.

To date there are nine sports involved in international contracting: baseball (with 18 players signed abroad), handball and volleyball (23), basketball (10), soccer (6), wrestling (7), cycling, water polo and softball (four each). Boxing should soon be added to this list.

“We have basketball players in the Spanish league, and the Romanian; 13 volleyball players in the principal European events; Arlenis Sierra, in the Astaná Club, in Kazakhstan, where she is considered the best non-European cyclist competing in the world circuit,” explained Saínz.

In the midst of this work we must note the limitations that have prevailed at this stage, with the cancellation of some international tournaments such as the German Bundesliga and the Can-Am, Pacific, and Italian baseball leagues, he stated.

As explained on previous occasions, one of the principles guiding the contracting policy is to contribute to improving our athlete’s performance and to see this improvement expressed in the country’s results in worldwide competition, regardless of the fact that this practice contributes to the personal satisfaction of athletes. Likewise, the sports movement obtains a source of income from the training rights of athletes selected for professional contracting abroad in a variety of disciplines.

(Taken from Granma)

According to the technical description, the essential component of the equipment conceived by engineer Arnoldo Alfredo Martínez Acosta is an electronic device controlled by a computer, which together allow pitchers to train without a catcher, and provide a differentiated characterization of each athlete.

Other advantages of the equipment are ease of programming; use of fewer balls during practice; detailed analysis of each pitch; and testing possibilities to determine if a pitcher is ready to play when scheduled.

The machine controls the catcher’s position within the virtual impact zone, which is digitally recorded along with the speed of the pitch, thus facilitating statistical studies.

This new equipment, in which electronics, mechanics, and computer programming are all involved, features a cushion that absorbs the kinetic energy of balls pitched, which are automatically returned to the pitcher by a transport mechanism.

(Granma)

A review of the history of pole vault in World and Olympic competitions shows that only the Cuban and Brazil’s Fabiana Murer have been able to challenge European and U.S. competitors who dominate the event, including Russia’s Yelena Isinbayeva, Stacy Dragila and Jennifer Suhr from the U.S. as well as Ekaterini Stefanidi of Greece.

Silva, from the western province of Pinar del Río, won silver in the London 2012 Games, gold in the Beijing 2015 World Championships and Sopot 2014 Indoor event, as well as bronze in the World tournaments in Moscow 2013 and London 2017.

Modest and reserved, but sure of herself, the 30 year old athlete spoke with Prensa Latina about her plans and goals.

“Tokyo – hosting the 32nd Olympic Games – is two years away and who knows what will happen, but I’ve always said that it is my dream (to win gold) because it’s the only global title I’m missing,” stated the Guadalajara 2011 and Toronto 2015 Pan American champion.

“I would like” she added “to retire with an Olympic gold medal, this is the dream I’m trying to achieve and I still have hopes, desires, and the intention to continue moving forward.”

According to the global multi-medal winner, as well as her aim to win an Olympic gold, she is also motivated by the love and support of her people, who celebrate every triumph and suffer every defeat alongside her.

Silva is well aware of what she is up against at this high level event which “anyone can win,” including renowned figures such as Stefanidi (28 years of age) from Greece, Sandi Morris (25) of the U.S., and Russia’s Anzhelika Sidorova (26).

Morris beat out Sidorova (4.91) with a leap of 4.95 meters during the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Birmingham, the UK, last March, in a spectacular final, leaving Río de Janeiro 2016 and London 2017 World Champion Stefanidi (4.80) in third place.

Regarding the last Olympic Games, Silva, with a personal best of 4.91 meters, acknowledged that, although not without its merits, her seventh place result was disappointing.

“It was a great struggle, really hard. The level was very high and I‘d had some problems,” she noted.

The Cuban athlete explained that she began training a little late, in early November and was experiencing some trouble.

“Although I wasn’t in the best condition we decided to compete all the same; we thought that I should go to represent my country and use the competition as preparation for this year’s main event, the Barranquilla Central American and Caribbean Games,” she noted.

Regarding her schedule in the lead up to the Barranquilla competition, taking place July-August, Silva explained that she will travel to Mexico to undergo training and participate in three stops of the Diamond League, in Monaco and England.

Despite the high level of pole vault globally, the Cuban athlete cannot be ruled out among the favorites in these global competitions because, as her fans have come to expect, win or lose, she’ll fight to the very end.

(Granma)

Becali expects both to train professional athletes here, and to expand cooperation in sports; thus he met with Le Khanh Hai, the vice minister that handles Sports within the portfolio also in charge of Tourism and Culture, with promising results.

As in other countries, we evaluate the sporting chances that our Olympic Games’ athletes come here to train; therefore, we reviewed Vietnamese potential in several disciplines, its infrastructure and other conditions, Becali told Prensa Latina.

The Vietnamese are also interested in Cuban boxing and volleyball coaches coming to work here and we also talk about exchanges of visits by national teams, he stressed.

During his Asian tour, the president of the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER) made a first stop in Mongolia, where he was received by the highest sports’ authorities of that country.

Mongolia is very strong in combat sports such as wrestling, especially in the female branch, and we want to take advantage of its potential. Also, in sport shooting and archery, a specialty in which they have a very advanced technology, he referred.

So we talked about the convenience of training our teams of these sports there, Becali said, and as we will do tomorrow in the case of Vietnam, we visited numerous facilities to see if they comply with the conditions required for it.

In addition, we assessed the possibilities of training Mongolian trainers from other disciplines in Cuba.

From Hanoi, the Cuban sports leader will travel to Tokyo on Saturday.

Apart from being the headquarters of the Olympic Games, he pointed out, Japan is very interested that Cubans are going to prepare there because there are many sports in which we are coincidentally strong, such as boxing, athletics, wrestling and, of course, baseball, that returns to the Olympic program.

Of course, in the case of baseball, our attention will be focused on complying with a strategy that guarantees our qualification, but afterwards, he said, there is a good chance that we will do a correct preparation in Japan, where we have players who are having very positive results.

In the Land of the Rising Sun, Becali plans to meet with the presidents of the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and of the federations of professional baseball, judo and gymnastics, as well as with the Minister of Sports.

There are four nations that are key in our training plans for the Olympic Games, the three already mentioned and China, but we will visit this one on a later occasion, he concluded.

(Prensa Latina)

The young long jumper and his coach Daniel Osorio Díaz have returned home, to continue training for the next competition, the Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla, Colombia, and took a moment to talk with Granma.

How much luck was involved in Echevarría’s performance at the World event?

Osorio: It had nothing to do with luck. Juan Miguel has been making steady progress as an athlete. He had some very good jumps last year, over eight meters, so we could predict that, at some point, he would make this great one, and so it was.

How do you remember the competition’s most challenging moments?

Echevarría: I think Manyonga, Marquis Dendy from the United States, and I offered an excellent spectacle. It was a strong, exciting event, that demanded lots of concentration. I would say that I put body and soul into every jump, going for the gold or the silver.

I think that in addition to feeling good physically, the psychological preparation I had helped a lot to deal with so much pressure from two world champion athletes, who put me against the wall several times. The level of competition at the event was such that I beat my personal record on two occasions.

How many details must come together to produce such an impressive outcome?

Osorio: There are many factors, that must come together at the exact moment: the pace of the run, the technical execution, the athlete’s psychological condition. We have worked a lot on controlling competitive anxiety, something that in previous events he was not able to overcome, be it because of his youth or immaturity. All of this was directed toward the outcome, and the change can be seen. That is why the public was so surprised to see him, at just 19 years of age, seemingly competing like a champion. Likewise, his physique is ideal for this discipline, the product of work with many trainers.

Who discovered Juan Miguel and guided him to high performance sports?

Echevarría: My career is similar to that of many other athletes in the country. I started in athletics at ten years of age, at Ernesto Lucas Elementary School, in the Guernica neighborhood, in this city, and later transferred to the Cerro Pelado EIDE (high performance school), until I made the national team, after participating in many events and competitions.

During those years, I had excellent trainers, like Tomás Hernández and Iván Izaguirre, in Camagüey; then Juan Gualberto Nápoles on the juvenile team, and since September, I’ve been with profe Daniel Osorio. Every one of them has contributed his grain of salt to my overall development.

What were you looking for in the recent Rafael Fortún athletics competition?

Echevarría: I wanted to offer my people, in my Camagüey, a quality show and I believe I accomplished this. I finished with a jump of 8.40 meters, considered the best outdoor record worldwide during the current season.

(Granma)

Any team could boast having good batters, blessed with tact and power, but without efficient pitchers, able to dominate the opponent, its chances at victory would be minimal.

This is, and continues to be the case. The best example of which was the Fourth World Baseball Classic. It wasn’t by chance that the champions of the competition, the United States, also had the best earned-run (2.15) and WHIP (0.89) – walks and hits per inning pitched. It was also the team which allowed the least hits among the 16 participating, with a .191 opponent batting average, just 15 walks, and 64 strike-outs.

It was no accident that Cuba ended its run in the competition with two wins and four losses, ceding three games in a row in the second round.

The Cuban team averaged about six earned runs per game, with a high WHIP average of 1.73, giving away 30 walks over 49 innings.

The chart featured at the bottom of this article lists the top 10 teams – all with over 90 innings pitched – with the highest number of walks given over the last four Classics, in order of total number of bases given. A first glance, Cuba leads all other squads with 114, followed by Venezuela, the only two nations to have conceded over 100 bases on balls.

Noteworthy throughout the four editions of the competition have been Japan’s pitchers, giving away only 70 walks in more than 273 innings, averaging about one every four innings and just over two in each one its 31 games, in addition to over 280 strike-outs, for an average of nine per game. Meanwhile, another world baseball powerhouse, the Dominican Republic, has given away 40 walks less than Cuba, in almost the same number of innings.
Games played; OP: Opening pitcher; CP: Closing pitcher; S: Strike-outs; W, walks. Stats: www.beisbolcubano.cu. Photo: Granma

A good reference point in this analysis is Cuba’s pitching performance in the 2013 World Classic. During the tournament the island’s ERA was 2.54, with 43 strike-outs and 19 walks. In four years we have deteriorated to such an extent that in the most recent edition of the completion, we struck out three less batters, and gave away 11 more walks, as well as allowing an average of 1.76 earned runs, well above Cuba’s typical rate seen in previous editions.

THE KEY FACTOR

There are various reasons why the quality of Cuba’s pitchers has declined. The National Baseball Directorate held a meeting to analyze the causes, which include problems accurately pitching toward the strike zone, and inability to throw inside, given a lack of control and the resulting fear of hitting the batter.

Another problem is pitchers’ inability to make the third and final strike, as many are only able to control a few throws, above all fast balls and sliders. To this must be added tardy pitching, wasting a lot of time on the mound, alongside careless base fielding. The majority of stolen bases against receiver Frank Camilo Morejón were the responsibility of Cuba’s pitchers.

If I were to choose a model pitcher from this era, I wouldn’t hesitate to mention a member of the Cooperstown Hall of Fame, and the U.S. team’s pitching coach during the Third World Classic, Greg Maddux. Not a typical fast pitcher (at the end of his brilliant career he only averaged at 86 miles per hour) Maddux had a sizeable arsenal of throws, including a circle-change which has been dubbed as the best in the Major League. The U.S. pitcher was renowned for his ball control, but in an interview shortly before retiring, Maddux noted that it’s not the arm that makes a great pitcher, it’s the mind. A pitcher who doesn’t use his head won’t last long in this sport. With this philosophy, Maddux set a record of 72.3 innings without giving away a base in 2001; only conceding 20 walks in 232 games in the same year, for an average of 0.77 per game.

Good control, however, isn’t a quality exclusive to U.S. pitchers. Cuba also has an excellent example in right hander Norge Luis Vera from Santiago de Cuba who, during his outstanding 15 year career, claimed the titles of Olympic, World, Pan and Central American Champion.

Vera, with good pitching technique and one of Cuban baseball’s best sliders, only gave away 437 walks in 1,917 innings, with a WHIP of 1.15 and almost three strike-outs for every base on balls.

Many of Cuba’s baseball fans have been calling for the creation of a Pitching Academy. Personally I don’t agree, firstly because academies existed in the past and disappeared shortly after they were established. It would perhaps be more beneficial to set up a single training system among youth leagues in all municipalities across the country, focused on perfecting pitching technique, vital to good control. Only this way will we be able to reverse the current situation. Let’s go from inferior to superior.

(Granma)

The data confirms the national trend of population growth rates close to zero, evident since 2004.

Reported were 125,064 births, 2,421 more than in 2014, but deaths surpassed last year at 3,381, while some 25,000 persons emigrated.

The province of Havana continues to have the highest population with 2,125,320 residents, followed by the eastern provinces of Santiago de Cuba (1,056,355) and Holguín, 1,036,572.

Regarding the aging of the population, the report indicated that the percentage of Cubans 60 years of age and older reached 19.4%, while those between 0 and 14 represent 16.5% of the total.

His Highness Sheikh Ahmad Fahad Al-Sabah, president of the Association of National Olympic Committees, arrived in Havana midday May 8, and was received at the José Martí International Airport by José Ramón Fernández, president of Cuba’s Olympic Committee, and Dr. Antonio Becali Garrido, head of the Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation.

(Granma)