{"id":268601,"date":"2023-04-24T18:45:45","date_gmt":"2023-04-24T22:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=268601"},"modified":"2023-04-24T18:45:45","modified_gmt":"2023-04-24T22:45:45","slug":"mireya-luis-great-jump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/sports\/mireya-luis-great-jump\/","title":{"rendered":"Mireya Luis\u2019 great jump"},"content":{"rendered":"

For me, the best Cuban athlete in history… She has been the maximum expression of a figure within a group.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 Navarro<\/strong>. Cuban sports commentator and analyst.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Entering Mireya Luis\u2019s home must provoke in a sports fan a sensation similar to the one she felt before going out to the tara flex to represent the Cuba team. Maybe anxiety. Her husband, Humberto Rodr\u00edguez, who was president of National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER), invites us into the spacious living room in the Fontanar neighborhood, in the Boyeros municipality of Havana. Everything is immaculate. The white floor shines. It is inevitable to feel a rare kind of tranquility. Harmony.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the walls, in fine frames, are the photos that testify to an incomparable career. I look at them while Mireya still doesn\u2019t show up. We stepped out into a side garden with a deep green lawn. Even. From behind a fence, a rottweiler, who apparently doesn\u2019t like strangers very much, peeks out. We go back inside. It is one of the coldest days in January 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mireya Luis at her home in Havana, January 2020. Photo: Jorge Luis Coll Untoria<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThis is our hobby when we\u2019re in Cuba,\u201d Humberto says, leaning against a back door frame, while he points to the orchard in the backyard.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cane, lettuce, tomato, papaya, mango, cabbage, tobacco… All perfectly distributed in a respectable plot of bright colors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Humberto shows me the book published on Mireya\u2019s life, written by the journalist Oscar S\u00e1nchez Serra. I had never held it in my hands before and now I hardly have a chance to leaf through it. <\/span>Entre cielo y tierra. Mireya Luis<\/span><\/i>, it reads on the cover.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLook, there she is,\u201d he says. \u201cTake pictures of her cooking, nobody has that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At last, it\u2019s her, dressed in a gray tracksuit with red trims from the Cuba team, and scarlet rubber gloves, with which she grabs the ladle to stir her dogs\u2019 food. She smiles and waves as she whisks what\u2019s in the pot. She has a 1950s pixie haircut, unlike the look she wore as a player.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a few snapshots, to give time for the culinary work to finish, we go to the table. Near the stove. She crosses her arms and shrugs. It\u2019s cold. On the wood, I put the camera, the diary, the recorder and, also, the book.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mireya Luis at her home in Havana. Photo: Jorge Luis Coll Untoria<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Mireya Luis Hern\u00e1ndez was born on August 25, 1967, in the town of Aguilar, in Vertientes, Camag\u00fcey. It was a town of Haitian campesinos and that day the youngest of her mother\u2019s nine children, Catalina, had arrived.<\/span><\/p>\n

She speaks tenderly of her childhood. She remembers the sunrises in that remote landscape of Cuban geography:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would sit by my bedroom window and look at the dew a lot. I discovered a little light in a small ateje plant that was mine and I played with that. I was very very small, sometimes I didn\u2019t like for 11 in the morning to come, because all that dew dried up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

However, her mother\u2019s tenacity and confidence in a better future for her offspring led them to the city of Camag\u00fcey, despite the fact that the father decided to stay in Vertientes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt first we had a dirt floor. We lived in a smaller, humble house, with less landscape; but it was also pretty. It had a river nearby and I loved that, although they never let me go. The other thing was the family activities, the dynamics of the house… You had to get up early, take a bath, dress well, eat what we had for breakfast without complaining, and each one goes to do the activity that corresponded to them. I remember that maternal discipline that seemed something like military service,\u201d she says, unable to contain her laughter. My brothers, when they were older, would tell her: \u2018Mom, we went through a cadet school with you.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCatalina was like that. I have great memories of her, of how she worked and struggled, how she was also elegant and how she took care of her hands, her skin; she being a campesina<\/em>, a woman who worked the land, who cut cane, who gave birth so much and had to do so many things. In the closet, she had four or five dresses, nothing else, her French-cut shoes, the pants suits…\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When she left with her children from the small town of Aguilar, Catalina had Che Guevara in mind, whom she came across in the guerrilla advance before 1959.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe had made many July 26th armbands without really knowing what it was. She joined because it was something that gave her hope; even without understanding it very well. She had people who told her: \u2018Catalina, this is to be better in the future.\u2019 And when Che passed by, she cooked for him, they killed a cow and she participated in all that. When they were leaving, Che met with the women and explained that they should get ready, that the Revolution was going to win and many opportunities would come for young people. That\u2019s why she decided to go with all her children and leave my father. It was a risk, an act of courage from Catalina.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1973, one of the events that would begin to change the life of Mireya, still a child, occurred indirectly. Her sister Mirta was on a scholarship in a place known as El Mangal, studying, and coach Enrique \u201cKiki\u201d Larrazaleta went there looking for athletes for volleyball.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe went, because before the technicians used to go out to hunt for talent and went where they had to go, and he captured two or three teenagers, among whom was Mirta. So, she moved to the EIDE in Camag\u00fcey and started taking balls to the house on weekends. She began to teach me to volley over the line and that\u2019s how I learned to hit the ball from below, to receive, and I fell in love with the activity. I had never seen a game, not even with her playing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe next year they opened the new Cerro Pelado EIDE and recruiting was announced. I did the tests and it was a bit hard for me. There were many girls, and I was short, although I had long legs. They didn\u2019t call me, and the list grew… Kiki and C\u00e1ndida [Jim\u00e9nez, Kiki\u2019s trainer and wife] were doing those tests. I went and told him:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMam, I want to do it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDarling, wait,\u201d she told me with great affection and looked at me as if to say: \u2018Oh, this dwarf, where am I going to put her?\u2019 She says that she looked at me and thought: \u2018Holy God, she is Mirta\u2019s sister; but I can\u2019t. Look how tiny she is!\u2019 And then I saw the girls doing jumps and I did it and touched the ceiling, which none of them had been able to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMam, look, I touched the ceiling.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI showed her the painted hand and she told me that they were dirty. So I stood in front of her and she told me to jump. I did it again, with both hands. She looked at me wide-eyed. She immediately told her husband: \u2018Put this one first on the list.\u2019 And he replied: \u2018Candida, are you crazy?\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how I got my scholarship.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mireya Luis left Camag\u00fcey to join the ranks of the national team and became a star. Photo: Deporcuba.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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She spent five years in the sports school. She stood out very quickly due to her skills and performance in competitions and, above all, she learned a lot from the coaches.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey were exceptional. C\u00e1ndida was a very young, elegant young woman. She was only 18 or 19 years old and she always encouraged us a lot, with a desire to work… I looked at her and thought she was huge, fine; but with a lot of character. On cold and airy days she put us under the hallway to warm up and we did exercises there. She would not take us out to the clay court.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow then, when we did go there, it was terrible,\u201d she takes a sip of tea and continues. \u201cThe training sessions were, for our age, phenomenal. We spent almost three months just doing imitations without touching the balls. We were dying to play with the balls and they, imitations and imitations. I had a colleague from the Esmeralda municipality, Ana Lidia Mart\u00ednez, who would say to me: \u2018I\u2019m getting bored because we don\u2019t touch the ball.\u2019 And the day we did it was perfect as if we had had a ball in the cradle. We had done so many imitations and technical exercises of each element of volleyball that we practically already knew how to play.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey never did anything wrong. They always had a strategy, a form of preparation, everything in its time. They gave us many theoretical classes: we knew how big the square of the net was, the size of the terrain, the diagonals, everything. That was necessary because you have one more element that nourishes you, gives you wisdom when it comes to serving or spiking and, when moving on the field, you know the distance. We thought it was not essential and Kiki said: \u2018This is very important.\u2019 Little by little we learned. Then it went well, when we entered the court,\u201d she recalls.<\/span><\/p>\n

The adaptation to the life of the scholarship was not complex for Mireya. She confesses that she did not suffer if their pass was taken away (because C\u00e1ndida also took away passes) and that they even stayed on weekends of their own free will to improve themselves and face the School Games in better shape. She only once fled to the guava field that was behind the center; the fear of jumping a ditch kept her from doing more.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA well-painted school, those stairs, the blinds, all the same, the bunk beds\u2026 I remember that there were 40 bunk beds in each cubicle and a lady who slept there and took care of the girls, making sure that we all wore pajamas, brushed our teeth, and in the morning that we left the beds made up. The food was wonderful; they served ice cream, malt, milk, we ate chicken, pork ham, hot bread in the morning with an omelet. Uniformed cooks, always wearing white caps.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe areas were taken care of. In the beginning, we didn\u2019t have a small court, but we had the one with a clay floor, which they took care of keeping it neat, collecting the papers, and that the net was always well placed. Teachers had extra hours with those who had problems. If you didn\u2019t pass the exams, you couldn\u2019t go to the School Games. There were many conditions, and not only material but human. The teachers lived for this and we all enjoyed it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mireya Luis came from Camag\u00fcey to the ranks of the national team and became one of the iconic figures of world volleyball. Photo: Taken from Chron.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cHas that changed now?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes. Now the teachers go to school and at 5 pm everyone leaves. Before, it depended on how the activity turned out, what problem the athlete had and there was a commitment. I\u2019m not saying that it is not so now; however, it is seen very little, it\u2019s like doing it because you have to. Before, I think, people were a little more devoted, the love was stronger. We said that we were going to train over the weekend and the cooks were there, and the snack, your toiletry products…\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The path to reach the national team would not be easy. Every time a visit from methodologists from the Cuban Federation arrived at the EIDE, Mireya Luis fell into the group of possible cuts. Her height didn\u2019t help her; but her physical strength and her will, along with the confidence of the teachers, had more to tell.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was never one of the prospects. I was not spoken to directly and I was aware of it. That didn\u2019t interest me much, because my trainers were the first to tell me: \u2018Don\u2019t worry, you keep going. We are going to continue.\u2019 They gave me exercises to grow, I always spiked harder, and I jumped with power. Which I liked. In addition, I did a specific job, they did not send me to do weights or strong physical work. I stood out in the competitions and I felt alive there.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI shared it with my teammates and enjoyed the victories of the group; although the coaches knew that my sporting future was in danger. However, they saw that it could come. They believed in the work they did, they transmitted it to me daily and that kept me in high spirits.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At just 13 years of age, she played a first-class championship, where she crossed paths with the champions Mercedes Pomares, Mamita P\u00e9rez, Imilsis T\u00e9llez, Ana Mar\u00eda Garc\u00eda, Ana Ibis D\u00edaz and other stars of the first generation of the \u201cMorenas del Caribe,\u201d as they were called. Reaching that level was the goal that Kiki and C\u00e1ndida set for her.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would say to her: \u2018Mam, I see that they are very tall,\u2019 and she would tell me not to worry. Until one day when she said to me: \u2018Do you want me to tell you something? You are going to have the world at your feet with your jump.\u2019 I never forgot that. It was a bit strong for a girl, I was missing about 15 centimeters to become a prospect. Until after five years of being in the EIDE, one day they decided to take me to the national team and try me out.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe arrived at the national ESPA on the first of September. I started practicing there with the girls and about two weeks later they called me to Cerro Pelado. Every day a bus left for there. I started with the national team. There I continued the same: hitting the ball and jumping very hard and people said: \u2018And where did she come from?\u2019\u201d She recalls her first steps as a member of the Morenas del Caribe.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mireya Luis at her home in Havana, January 2020. Photo: Jorge Luis Coll Untoria.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Entering a court with those who were her idols in the sport was a shot of adrenaline for the teenager. She took notice of the best ones, she delighted herself and managed, in the process, to delight others.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was awestricken, looking at those women who did some exercises without dropping the ball, from here to there, and tremendous defenses; but when it was my turn I just tried to do it, and if it was necessary to attack hard, I would attack very hard and they liked it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLucila Urgell\u00e9s had an attack technique that seemed to reach heaven with her arm up there. I loved that Imilsis and Ana Mar\u00eda passed me the ball and they liked it, because the ball they sent me ended in a spike; and they threw it up and I looked for it higher. I played with that. I was perhaps psychologically prepared to do everything I could. And it paid off and gave me confidence. Little by little they introduced me into the group. \u2018Hey, where\u2019s the ant?\u2019 Imilsis would ask. They encouraged me and in a short time I began to be part of their group.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In order to achieve that status within the team, she also needed to adapt to the strong physical demand of the training in Cerro Pelado\u2019s training.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI had never done that type of physical preparation in Camag\u00fcey, and I had my way of doing it naturally, without weights. Here when they said: \u2018Let\u2019s go to the track. Seven and a half laps in 15 minutes….\u2019 I started running and arrived in the arms of Imilsis T\u00e9llez and Teresa Santa Cruz. I was so tired that I got there almost crawling. It was complicated. In the exercises with weights doing volleys and jumps they had to help me with the weights. For me it was something out of the ordinary. Kiki had come with me from Camag\u00fcey and told me: \u2018You have to endure. If you put up with this, you stay.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At first, she would feel like fainting, until she got the hang of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The remembrance of her first days with Eugenio George makes her smile instantly: \u201cHe was silent, he just looked and laughed. I remember doing attack actions, bim-bam!, hard, and he did like this,\u201d she reproduces a look from the corner of her eye, \u201che would turn and laugh. He never spoiled me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It was almost coming to settle. At the end of 1982 and the beginning of 1983, the girl from Vertientes represented Cuba in a winter tour of Federal Germany. Officially, she was already one more member of the Morenas del Caribe, a team with which she would dominate the world of volleyball in the 1980s and 1990s, giving continuity to the project that was cemented since the 1970s, especially from the regional and continental crowns, as well as the world scepter conquered in the Soviet Union in 1978.<\/span><\/p>\n

Initially, she carried her number 3 on her back, which Ana Ibis D\u00edaz had bequeathed to her; but something had changed, the coaches decided to turn her into a passer, since a setter with those levels of attack would be important for the team, although in the blink of an eye, it became clear that she was not made to serve balls.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u00d1ico put me in that position. He told me: \u2018You have good fingers, but you don\u2019t have such a good volley.\u2019 And it was true. Every time they put me to pass the ball, everyone went the other way and I was left alone waiting for someone to come and attack. Hey! Iron fingers. That was\u2026and people laughed. However, Eugenio decided to send me on that trip as a passer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the first games, she did not play much, until she was announced in a match. \u201cEveryone: \u2018Oops,\u2019\u201d she makes a dismissive gesture. \u201cIt was kind of terrible, and they took me out. And then, in the other set, I entered as an attacker, and I spiked a lot. I did very well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That day a passer was lost and perhaps the greatest spiker of all time was won.<\/span><\/p>\n