What’s left of Lima: was Cuba a disappointment in the Pan American Games?
When the curtains of the Toronto 2015 Pan American Games went down and I saw Cuba in a strange fourth place―it had ranked second or first since 1971―with only 36 gold medals, I thought I was living a passing nightmare, one of those dreams that don’t let you sleep for a night and then you erase from your memory. But days, months, years went by and, far from burying the old ghosts, new doubts appeared. Rio 2016 didn’t convince and was, in the end, one of the Olympic events with the least amount of disciplines with medals for Cuba; in Barranquilla, the regional leadership was lost after decades of uncontested dominance.... With those precedents so close, I think it’s impossible to be amazed by the recent performance of the Cuban delegation in the Lima Pan American Games, where they won the least amount of titles (33) since Cali 1971 (30) and for the first time in 56 years weren’t in the four leading-edge places in the Games. Photo: José Tito Meriño. Although it’s difficult to digest such a decrease, it’s currently crazy to expect more from the Cuban sports movement, plunged into its worst crisis since the takeoff of the...