Baseball

Alfredo Despaigne, Cuban player of Piratas de Campeche baseball team, has been indefinitely suspended amid doubts about the authenticity of his Dominican passport because of the avalanche of information from national and international media, the Mexican Baseball League reported.

The Mexican League decided to put him aside from his Season with them to ask the Dominican Republic Embassy in Mexico City to verify the document in which he was registered to play baseball in Mexico. The League reported that if there is no response of the Dominican authorities, it will report the situation to the Mexican Attorney General's Office to clarify the matter.

According to ESPN and some U.S. media, the registration of Cuban outfielder in the Mexican League was performed using a fake Dominican passport, which flagrantly violates the ethical principles of the Cuban Baseball Federation (BPF), an organization that has promoted and oversees the development of the process of recruiting Cuban players in foreign leagues as part of the new remuneration policy for athletes and coaches.

The Cuban Federation points out that it has no any responsibility with the presumed violation of the rules governing the process of registration of players within the Mexican League and this was recognized in the note released on May 15th by the board of the Piratas de Campeche which clearly expresses in its 2nd point that: "The Sports Institutions of Cuba, especially the Cuban Baseball Federation, are absolutely unaware of the facts that the media have generated in the Dominican Republic and have been published in relation to the Cuban player."

In other news, with the presence of the highest sports executives of the country, guests of honor and heartfelt tributes were enjoyed at the capital's Lázaro Peña theater that lived the Awards Gala of the 53rd National Baseball Series, where the best players, top teams and staff that took part during the recently concluded baseball campaign were recognized.

Volleyball

Cuba and Trinidad and Tobago will meet this Friday in a match up of unbeaten --after beating Curacao and Haiti, respectively-- corresponding to the 3rd round of the tournament of the Confederation of North, Central America and the Caribbean, underway in Havana.

However, both teams have already secured their presence in the final on Saturday, and the winner will achieve the title and a ticket to the World Championship in Italy from September 23rd to October 12th.

This Friday also will clash Curazo and Haiti, who have filed 2 setbacks and a day after, both teams will fight for the 3rd place of the competition.

For Cuba, the most prominent figure so far is the young 14-year-old girl, Melissa Vargas, who accumulated 33 points in the first 2 games, while Jalicia Ross-Kydd stands for Trinidad and Tobago with 38 points.

Chess

The 7th round of the Capablanca Chess Memorial currently underway at the Havana Riviera hotel, in the Cuban capital, only lived tables and let alone Filipino Wesley So and Cuban Leinier Dominguez in the top of the Elite Group.

So and Leinier tied with Spanish Francisco Vallejo and Hungarian Zoltan Almasi, holder exponent, respectively.

Local GM Lázaro Bruzón (2682) also signed the peace with his Ukrainian counterpart, Vassily Ivanchuk (2753), in just 17 moves of a Ninzoindia defense.

Now, Bruzón and Vallejo follow Leinier with 3.5 points per capita and then, Almasi (3) and Ivanchuk (2.5) are located.

Archery

The Cuban Juan Carlos Stevens finished 43rd in the recurved bow modality in the qualifiers for the Archery World Cup based in Medellín, Colombia, a journey enhanced with a world record of South Korea's women team which achieved the astronomical sum of 2032 points.

Stevens added only 652 units in the double round at 70 meters, where the South Korean Woojin Kim (694) won, a man with no presence in the international ranking so far, who left behind such stars as his compatriot and Olympic champion Jin Hyek OH (686) and American Brady Ellison (680), 6th in the world rankings.

Stevens, 5th in Beijing-2008 Olympics debuted in the 2nd round against the Chilean Christopher Barra.