As promised, Cuban judoka brought their ninth gold medal at the XXIV Central American and Caribbean Games, by dominating the mixed team tournament.
San Salvador, June 28 (JIT) -- As promised, Cuban judoka brought their ninth gold medal at the XXIV Central American and Caribbean Games, by dominating the mixed team tournament.
With the label of strong favorites, the team led by Julio Alderete and Yordanis Arencibia defeated El Salvador, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic in a row, accumulating 12 wins and two losses.
Idalys Ortiz, Andy Granda, Arnáes Odelín and Magdiel Estrada were in charge of "liquidating" the local team in the quarterfinals, in a flurry of four ippon against Daniela Henríquez, Juan Turcios, Alejandra Ruiz and Edwin Serrano, respectively.
Andy, Arnáes and Magdiel repeated victories in the semifinals against Venezuelans Antonio Rodríguez, Kady Cabezo and Iván Salas, in all cases by ippon. Idelannis Gómez could have decided the top, but lost by ippon to Elvismar Rodríguez. Then, Iván Silva concluded the hostilities by ippon against Carlos Páez.
The final against the Dominican Republic was marked by the third victories of Arnaez and Magdiel, as well as by the golden brooch of the immense Idalys Ortiz.
Arnaez defeated Ana Rosa by ippon, Magdiel defeated Antonio Tornal and Maylin del Toro defeated Katherine Otaño. Jorge Martinez could not finish the match against Robert Florentino (ippon) and left the scene ready for Idalys to finish off the Central Caribbean judo competition, held at the gymnasium of the University of El Salvador.
In the last bout of the event, the Artemisian defeated Eiraima Silvestre by hansoku-make to the applause of her teammates and other members of the delegation.
"We were fighting for this medal, everyone was waiting for it. Logically I feel good. We did five bouts in the final, we lost one and I had to define to leave no doubts. For us it is a great merit to surpass the performance of Barranquilla 2018", expressed Ortiz just after the match.
"The girls competed very well, they gave their all on the mat and the results came out. We used to sweep in this type of event, but not today. The rivals are preparing, some of them even in other countries, and we have to take that into account. Surpassing what was done in Barranquilla 2018 is very important, especially because then we competed in four more events," Yordanis Arencibia, head of the women's technical team, told JIT.
