2023-06-16 08:46:11
The Cuban discus thrower Denia Caballero, Olympic medalist and world champion in 2015, has escaped from an athletic delegation in Spain, where he competed representing the island in the Castellón Provincial Council Meeting. Caballero thus joins the long list of Cuban athletes who have taken advantage of competitions to desert their country.
The information was disclosed on social networks by journalist Javier Brito Padilla, who noted on his Facebook profile that “According to sources close to the athlete, Denia left the delegation she was part of in Spain, for which reason she renounces the competitive commitments she had with Cuba for the coming months.”
The news was later confirmed by Play-Off Magazine with members of the delegation who were participating in said event.
Discus throwing specialist Denia Caballero had achieved her best mark of the season in said event, with 63.07m, mark with which she obtained the silver medal in the contest, only behind another Cuban, Silinda Morales, who threw the discus 65.06m. Denia Caballero She was world champion in the discus throw in 2015 and bronze at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games.
Besides it was gold at the 2015 Toronto Pan American Games and won a silver at the 2019 Doha World Cup.
After the abandonment of Denia Caballero, Cuba is left without its two main female representatives in the launch of the female album in less than a year, after Yaimé Pérez made the same decision at the past World Cup in Oregon, held in the United States and will leave an official sports delegation.
The discus thrower from Villa Clara was also included in the athletic roster for the Central American and Caribbean Games to be held this year 2023 in San Salvador.
At the moment, his whereabouts are unknown and his only communication has been with the publication of a story on Instagram: “Focus on yourself, on your happiness, on your goals and on the person you want to be. Live day by day, step by step And no matter what else, be happy.”
Caballero joins the long list of high-performance athletes who have left the island between 2022 and 2023. In 2022, a total of 63 Cuban athletes abandoned delegations or contracts abroad, according to data from the Cubalite digital site. The figure – which did not account for both legal and illegal migratory departures – includes athletes from 18 disciplines.
Historically defections have been tied to baseball, but in recent months the same phenomenon has been registered in other disciplines. For example, in March of last year, long jumper Lester Lescay Gay, the 2018 youth Olympic champion, left the athletics delegation during a tour of Europe. At the end of June 2022, the Cuban Boxing Federation reported that the Olympic and world champion Andy Cruz was caught in a frustrated attempt to leave the country. As punishment, Cruz was expelled from Cuban sports for his “repeated indiscipline,” according to the National Boxing Commission.
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