Andy Granda
Havana, January 10 (ACN)-- The Grand Slam of Paris will be the first commitment of Cuban judo in 2023, a year of extensive international calendar, including the Central American and Caribbean Games in San Salvador and the Pan American Games in Santiago de Chile.
According to the website www.ijf.org, the Parisian competition will be held on February 4 and 5 at the Accor Arena, with the presence, so far, of 385 athletes -234 men and 151 women- from 59 countries.
Four judoists are registered for Cuba, led by Andy Granda, third in the world ranking (RM) and world champion in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (November), in over 100 kilograms (kg).
Granda is one of the favorites to climb the podium, which will guarantee him to increase points for the RM that distributes the places for the Olympic list -one per nation in each division- for the Paris 2024 Games.
The list of the largest of the Antilles for this competition is completed with Orlando Polanco (66 kg), Vanessa Godinez (48 kg) and Melissa Hurtado (52 kg), who appear in the 63rd, 123rd and 61st places of the RM, respectively.
The disciples of Julio Alderete and Yordanis Arencibia, heads of the men's and women's technical groups, in that order, also plan to participate in the last qualifying tournament for the multisport event in El Salvador to be hosted by the Dominican Republic in March.
In April, the Cubans will host an Open in Varadero, in which more than one category will be summoned, among these the senior, in search of points for the world ranking that distributes places for the Olympic list of the Parisian multidisciplinary competition.
Another important commitment that Alderete and Arencibia's pupils plan to attend, with their sights set on Paris, is the World Championship in Doha, Qatar, from May 7 to 14, while from June 23 to July 8 they must compete with full teams in the Centrocaribes of San Salvador.
October will be the month of another fundamental competition, the Pan American Games in Santiago de Chile, from October 20 to November 5, but before that, from 4 to 7, the juniors must compete in the world championship in Coimbra, Portugal.
The Cubans were in 2022 in a qualifying tournament for the Salvadoran competition held in Panama City, where they won five gold medals, five silver medals, five bronze medals and two fifth places -they competed for bronze-.
In the year just ended, judo also had an extensive international calendar, with a highlight for Andy Granda, who was selected the best individual sports athlete in Cuba.
The Cuban supercomplete won the gold medal at the Pan American Championship in Oceania (September) and bronze medals at the European Open Tournament (April) and the Antalya Grand Slam (April).
Also standing out in 2022 were Ivan Silva (90 kg) and Idalis Ortiz (+78 kg), who ranked fourth and twelfth in the RM, respectively, and were included among the top 10, while judo was mentioned among the most outstanding disciplines of Cuba.
