Daniela Fonseca

Havana, February 24 (RHC/PL)-- Cuban Olympian Daniela Fonseca intensifies training on her way to defend her title at the Caribbean Table Tennis Championship, scheduled for March 3-8 in this capital.

The 20-year-old Junior Pan American queen leads the preliminary list of 27 tennis players from seven nations summoned to dispute the prizes in the singles modality, at the start of the competitive cycle towards the Paris 2024 Games.

In addition to Fonseca, Cuba will present in the individual event Karla Rodriguez, Idalys Lovet and Lizdainet Rodriguez, the latter two with participation in club competitions in Europe.

For the main exponent of national table tennis, the Caribbean tournament will mark her return to action after winning gold in the youth edition of Cali-Valle, last December 2.

In an interview with Prensa Latina, the Cuban tennis player described as important for her career the scepter on Colombian soil, as it crowned a season with her debut in the Olympic Games.

"Tokyo 2020 left a lot of experience, I was able to meet and see in action the great players, since I have not had the chance to participate in world championships or ProTour tournaments. It was something shocking to be in the Olympics, I fulfilled a childhood dream," she said.

On her return to training at the "Cerro Pelado" National Center, the young racquet does not waste time and advocates for a greater international presence in order to improve her position in the ranking.

"The goals are to give my best, train hard and qualify again for Paris 2024. Collectively, we want to fight for the Central American gold medal and surpass our previous performance in the Pan American Games", he commented on the ambitions for the current stage.

The Caribbean Championship will gather in Havana tennis players from Barbados, Guyana, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago.

None of the registered players appear in the "top 100" of the world ranking and among the foreigners, the Puerto Rican Daniely Ríos and the Dominican Eva Brito are the rivals to be taken into consideration by the Cubans, ranked 185th and 201st, respectively.

The Havana event is part of the individual qualifying route to the Pan American Championship in Santiago de Chile in October and to the 2023 World Championship.

In the last version of 2019, Daniela Fonseca celebrated in the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall of Guyana the crowns in the under-21 and senior categories, in the latter final she defeated Esmerlyn Castro, from the Dominican Republic.