"We are going to be among the top 20 countries in the medal table" of the Olympic Games, Oscar Nuevo, senior director of the Sports Institute (INDER), said this Wednesday during a meeting with journalists in Havana.

One of the best cards in the delegation is the Greco-Roman wrestling legend Mijaín López, a mass of muscle and almost two metres tall.

He is "extremely focused for his fifth Olympic gold medal, which will be historic," said the head of Greco-Roman wrestling coaches in Cuba, Raúl Trujillo.

If he achieves the feat, 41-year-old Mijaín would become the only athlete to win five Olympic golds in a row in the same category in an individual sport. Other stars of the stature of the judoka Idalys Ortiz, the boxers Julio César La Cruz and Arlen López and the shooter Leuris Pupo appear as spark plugs of the delegation, made up of 62 athletes in 16 sports.

This is the fourth smallest Cuban delegation since the triumph of the revolution in 1959. Cuba went to Tokyo 2020 with 69 athletes in 15 sports. But the historical Olympic power of Latin America also has a crop of young people in its plenitude, such as the Tokyo champion wrestler Luis Orta, the canoeist Yarisleidis Cirilo, the triple jumper Leyanis Pérez and the taekwondo player Rafael Alba, all Olympic or world medalists with lineage to climb to the podium.

To get to Paris, these athletes overcame the worst economic crisis in their country in three decades, with a consequent wave of escapes in Cuban sports. According to official figures, from 2022 to the end of last year, 187 high-performance athletes had migrated. Star figures such as boxers Andy Cruz, Yoenlis Feliciano Hernández and Robeisy Ramírez, triple jumpers Jordan Díaz and Andy Díaz, and discus thrower Yaimé Pérez, some representing other nations today, left.

Tokyo's monarch canoeist Fernando Dayán also fled, who recently joined the Refugee Team with another Cuban, Ramiro Mora, an unprecedented event for the Caribbean island.

Five golds

Even with the losses of elite athletes, Cuba closed in the top-5 of the medal table at the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games. To be among the top 20 Olympic powers, it must achieve "no less than five gold medals," said José Antonio Miranda, director of High Performance at Inder. 

"It's a big challenge," he noted.

Sports authorities have said that Cuba prepared a "critical route" to Paris, with a selective philosophy, to give personalized attention to 19 athletes who will carry the greatest responsibility for the Cuban medal table in Paris. The Cuban delegation, whose average age is 27 years, will arrive in Paris with four Tokyo champions, but did not achieve its goal of bringing between 70 and 80 competitors.

Athletics and wrestling are the disciplines in which the largest number of athletes managed to qualify, while boxing, which historically featured a full team and was baptised as "the Flagship" of Cuba, only classified five fighters.

The new locomotive

Displacing boxing, wrestling has become the new engine of Cuban sport thanks to Mijaín, five-time world champion, and the 2023 world champions from Belgrade, Gabriel Rosillo and Luis Orta, the latter chosen as the best Greek fighter. of the world last year by the International Federation (UWW).

In Paris "I am going to repeat it: It is a goal that can be achieved," said López, who has not competed in the last two years, but has prepared intensely to fight for his fifth consecutive crown.

Despite its absence in Los Angeles-1984 and Seoul-1988, Cuba has 235 Olympic medals (84-69-82) and occupies 16th place in the historical medal table, at the forefront of Latin America, ahead of Brazil, which files ( 37-42-71).