Badminton
Cuba's badminton player Osleni Guerrero said goodbye early to the Canadian Open after losing in the 1st round against Thailand Pannawit Thomgnuam in the fair which takes place in the city of Vancouver.
The Caribbean, Latin-America's Best Player for his 54th position in the world ranking, yielded to the Asian, ranked 187th, in 3 sets, with scores of 19-21, 21-16, 21-15, in a 50 min. game.
The Canadian Open was the 4th tournament of the year for Osleni, who archives a couple of titles in the Season: the International Open of Peru and The Open of Venezuela, and 3rd place at the Havana's Giraldilla Tournament.
The other 2 Latin-Americans initially enrolled in the Canadian lid, Mexican Lino Muñoz and Guatemalan Kevin Cordon, were not presented.
Baseball
The U.S. Baseball Federation announced the team of 24 players who will clash against their counterparts of China Taipei, Japan and Cuba, and will attend the Baseball Tournament of Harlem, the Netherlands, from July 11th to 20th.
The selected, which will be led by coach Dave Van Horn, includes 24 players, 3 catchers, 4 infielders, 5 outfielders and 12 pitchers, 2 of them lefties.
Among those invited are included infielder Alex Bregman and right-hander Ryan Burn, the only ones who participated in the butt facing Cuba last year.
Also highlight catcher Chris Okey and right-hander Carson Fulmer, members of the U.S. team at the 2011 Pan-American Junior, and catcher Zack Collins, who was part of the World Cadet Top that year.
It will be a training stop within the preparation called Summer Tour, where the Americans held 7 games against teams from different universities with favorable balance of 6 wins and only 1 defeat.
In these meetings, offensively excelled 3rd baseman and outfielder, of only 16 years, Christin Stewart, who averaged 500, after connecting 14 hits in 28 at-bats, with 7 doubles, 2 homers and 11 RBIs.
Yesterday, Tuesday, officially began the stops when Americans face off Chinese Taipei, from July 1st-5th, then will bump into Japan from 6th-8th, then travel to the Dutch city of Harlem, from 11th-20th to finally confront Cuba, from July 23rd-27th, in the cities of Matanzas and Pinar del Rio.
Chess
For the first time, 3 Cuban chess players are in the top 100, according to the latest FIDE ranking updated list, which is still headed by Norwegian Magnus Carlsen with 2877 points.
Cuba's GM Leinier Domínguez got comfortable in the 11th place, the best Latin American with 2760 of ELO rating, behind French Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (2766 ELO rating), who has been in the 10th place since May.
Meanwhile, Las Tunas-born Lázaro Bruzón is placed 52nd with 2696 units while Yuniesky Quesada (2655), from Villa Clara, showed the highest coefficient of his career and now sits at place 96th.
Other Cubans appearing in the ranking are Isam Ortiz (2592), place 249th and Yuri González (2546), place 462nd, who complete the 5-team member to the upcoming Chess Olympiads in Tromso, Norway.
In the top 10 led by Carlsen appear the Gms Armenian Levon Aronian (2805), Russian Alexander Grischuk (2795), Italian Fabiano Caruana (2789) and American Hikaru Nakamura (2787), Russian Sergey Karjakin (2786), Indian Viswanathan Anand (2785), Russian Vladimir Kramnik (2777), Bulgarian Veselin Topalov (2772) and French Vachier-Lagrave, in that order.