Winning is the goal inherent to competing, or at least that is the modernist optics of sports. However, for the great majority of mortals, conquering a gold medal is a chimera. That was the case of Cuban Hanser García, a swimmer who arrived at the 2012 London Olympic Games as pure decoration and dazzled the world when, against all forecasts, he reached the 100m freestyle grand final.

It seems untrue, but it is the crude reality. The organizers of the Caribbean Baseball Series denied Cuba’s request to participate as “guest league” and by the way radically cut off its possible return to the traditional regional championship. The request made by the largest of the Antilles consisted in participating as guest instead of becoming a permanent member due to its impossibility to pay the membership fee.

The much publicized battle between Cuban Dayron Robles and Chinese Liu Xiang for the gold medal in the 110 hurdle-race of the upcoming Olympic Games will be anthological, no doubt about it. However, does this qualify them for a title in London 2012? In my humble opinion, it does not. At this height of the season, neither one of the Olympic champions can sleep in peace, and much less consider himself the indisputable favorite, all the more after the fabulous irruption on the scene of U.S. athlete Aries Merritt.