2024-04-01 20:52:40
Text: Raúl del Pino
Photos: Emmanuel Santos
News about the so-called sport of high mesh dominates the sports headlines in Cuba these days. The definitions of the national championships with new monarchs in both sexes were followed by the announcement of two important friendly matches for the men’s team heading to the Nations League (VLN) 2024.
The president of the Cuban Volleyball Federation, Ariel Sainz, confirmed to the Radio Habana Cuba station that the national team will play on May 17 and 18 in Argentina against the local squad, as part of its preparation for the last scoring event for qualifying for the Paris Olympic Games.
The tour of the South American nation will be attended by the 14 players who will soon travel to Rio de Janeiro for the first stop of the VLN, including star Robertlandy Simón (Piacenza), who will return to the island at the end of April or in the first days of May, along with the rest of the international ones. The federation specified that only the other stars Miguel Angel López (Sada Cruzeiro) and Osniel Mergarejo (Milan) will travel directly to the friendly duels.
Cuba and Argentina, although they left a pleasant image, failed to seal their ticket in the pre-Olympic tournament held in Brazil last September. Now both teams will have one last chance to do so in the contest scheduled between May 21 and June 30 in six cities around the world.
The albicelestes appear in sixth place in the ranking, with 314.35 points, and only a poor performance would leave them out of the Paris event. Meanwhile, the Antilleans have a more complicated outlook as they are in 11th place in the rankings (236.96 points) and need to improve several positions to achieve classification.
So far, seven of the 12 places in the tournament have already been distributed, held by Germany, Brazil, the United States, Japan, Poland and Canada, in addition to the host and monarch of Tokyo 2020, France. For the remaining five tickets, Italy (third in the ranking), Argentina (sixth), Slovenia (seventh), Serbia (ninth), Cuba (eleventh), Netherlands (13th), Turkey (14th) and Iran ( fifteen).
Camagüey and Santiago, prophets in their land
The Iván Hidalgo Funes auditorium in Camagüey and the multipurpose Santiago Urgellés auditorium served as venues for the first-class national women’s and men’s events, respectively. In both matches, the home teams were proclaimed new champions after the competitions developed under a round-robin format.
In the women’s competition, the Camagüeyans took the top spot from Pinar del Río in recent days and won the gold medal thanks to nine victories, one defeat, 27 sets in favor and four against, which earned them a total of 44 points, two more than their western rivals.
The men’s competition, meanwhile, saw the locals rise to the top of the podium after an almost perfect performance. After losing on the first day against Cienfuegos, the Santiago team had nine successes in a row without leaving their rivals without a choice, among which was the defending champion Pinar del Río, who this time finished in the basement.