2024-07-03 21:55:14
Text: Cuba News 360 Editorial Team
Photos: RL Hevia
After closing out 2023 in style with a handful of various ball control records, Matanzas native Jhoen Lefont returned to his former glory this year and this weekend certified a new record for touches with his head in the water.
The pool at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba was the ideal setting for the former water polo player to set a new record in 2031 strokes in a discipline that combines endurance and technique almost bordering on perfection. The 1958 he had achieved in November 2022 are now a thing of the past.
“The main goal was to break the previous record, but we really wanted to surpass 2,000. In the previous attempt we had come close to breaking it, but now we have managed to surpass it by a wide margin,” the 35-year-old dominator told various media outlets who came to the hotel to witness the event.
The key to success in this challenge was the extensive preparation he underwent, as Lefont himself confessed: “I had useful training bases in Varadero and at the Baraguá swimming pool complex, our headquarters, especially for physical work and the technical and tactical part of ball control in the water.”
On this occasion, the presence of his daughter, who is just over a year old, for the first time also became a motivating factor. “I was afraid that at some point she might shout ‘Daddy,’ because it has already happened to me in training, but she behaved very well and ended up applauding me. In general, I feel very happy with the result,” he said.
Lefont also said that his plan was to start the season with an attempt to break his own record for most head impacts in a minute, which currently stands at 167 and is recognised in the Guinness Book of Records, but an injury to the heel of one of his feet delayed his plans. In the future, that could be the new objective.
He also faces a different challenge in Varadero, with the aim of breaking his record for the longest distance in open water while balancing the ball on his head. This challenge would mean setting a record for the first time in his home province.
Other goals for 2024 could include an attempt to break his ballast records, including the most recent one in November 2023, when he exceeded seven minutes balancing a soccer ball in the water, with a five-kilogram load tied to his waist.