2023-06-01 13:03:00
Nothing in his walk and easy laugh indicates that Orestes Solano can take down anyone with a single swing. Who goes to visit Honda Bay He does not imagine that this simple man was crowned three times Pan American boxing champion. But the people there know him and his sports career well.
They even know about his toughest fights, the ones that left marks and pain… for not attending.
“The year of the Barcelona Olympic Games, he had won the National Tournament and the Giraldo Córdova Cardín. For reasons of life, they took Ángel Espinosa, who lost to someone I had beaten months before.
“Of course that affected me. Before, when the Games in Los Angeles, in 1984 and Seoul, in 1988, he had been national champion both times and Pan-American champion. However, Cuba did not participate. Barcelona was my last chance.
“I had prepared myself for years and they did not take me. Therefore, I decided to say goodbye to the ring. When the time comes, you realize it, and you know that you have to separate yourself from the sport. Still, it was very difficult.”
Perhaps because he was born in such a mountainous place, his path was never smooth or direct.
“In my division there were good fighters, from Espinosa and Armandito Martínez to Guzmán, José Luis Hernández, Ulises Castillo… I didn’t suffer many defeats at the international level; in Europe I won. My toughest rivals were in Cuba. What he had was a blunderbuss! You had to really train.”
The hooks and swines of his powerful right hand won victories against world and Olympic champion boxers such as Cubans Armando Martínez and Ángel Espinosa.
Solano wrote his story one blow at a time: in 415 bouts, he barely experienced 35 setbacks. In Havana he bathed in gold, beating another native, Ramón Garbey, in the 1990 World Cup final.
At the World Championships held in Sydney, Australia, in 1991, he reached the podium. A German boxer prevented him from advancing by beating him in the fight for the silver medal. He got bronze.
“Alcides wanted to take me at 81 kilos, and it was already a lot of weight: he didn’t feel the same as 75; the opponents were very big ”, he alleges laughing.
But there is an event that unites the entire Cuba in total effervescence: the Pan American Games. Everyone wants to see the largest of the Antilles at the top of the medal table. And the flagship of the delegation is boxing; therefore, each fighter is required to achieve gold.
Among those who have achieved it there are only four men who carried out the feat three times: Rolando Garbey, Julio González, Félix Savón and the native of Bahía Honda.
“It was good, because I always fought and was able to contribute with three gold medals: in Caracas’83 and Indianapolis’87, in the 71-kilogram division and in Havana’91, among the 81-kilograms. I closed the medal table here. Pressure? No, I went out to fight. He had prepared me and I knew I was winning. My main weapon was always training and preparing well”.
This is precisely how it all began, when he saw other boys training and he got excited, late, at 13 or 14 years old, in the town of Orozco, with Manolo Socarrás, his first coach.
Thus came the medals that make him so proud, in the Pan American Games, the Goodwill Games, the World Cup… Later he worked in the national team, trained boxers in the community and currently works in agriculture with his brother.
“It’s as difficult to fight the punches as it is to face the earth,” he says with a laugh, “but you have to keep fighting.”
#Solano #history #written #blow #blow