Tomorrow the World Indoor Athletics will begin and the performance of Cuba could easily be forecast already. To Sopot , Poland, the Cuban squad will go with a small delegation, only 6 athletes, and from that figure we can already assume that the aspirations of this group are rather slim .
The leaders of the team that will intervene on Polish soil are the pole vaulter Yarisley Silva and triple jumper Pedro Pablo Pichardo. Undoubtedly, they are only real hopes of medals for Cuba. Silva does not reach the event at her full potential, she goes without having recorded good jumps this season, so far she has only been able to fly over 4.46 meters, a result achieved a few weeks ago in the Birmingham athletics meeting, in England. Still the Pinar del Rio athlete, despite the closeness of the competition has failed to crystallize her usual grip of 4.30 meters due to lack of rigid poles in training.
However, Silva’s list of achievements is a plus that always influences events of this nature and that might favor her this time. She was already bronze medalist in the last championship of the world in Moscow and runner-up in the London Olympic Games.
Meanwhile, the other possibility for Cubans is Pichardo, world runner up outdoors, who has every chance to win these World Indoor Championships. One, his fiercest rival, the star Teddy Tamgho , has not started the season and will not attend the meeting , a psychological and competitive data that makes the Cuban the heavy favorite to grab the gold medal . And two, that favoritism is not casual, beyond the absence of Tamgho , Pichardo currently leads the ranking with remarkable records.
The rest of the members of the delegation: Ernesto Reve and Yarianna Martinez, both in triple jump, and hurdlers Yordan O’Farrill and Jhoanis Portilla. Of the entire delegation, the only one who has participated in a world indoor event is Silva (Istanbul 2012) .
In Sopot, hurdler Dayron Robles will not participate with Cuba. The Cuban Federation decided to ignore the call of the Beijing 2008 Olympic champion, who “was not even considered for making the team “the national commissioner Jorge Luis Sánchez said.
In World Indoor Championships, Cuba accumulates a balance of 40 medals, of which 15 are gold, 14 silver and 11 bronze.
