Photo: Fédération Internationale de Judo.
Havana, July 27 (ACN) - Cuba has already secured the participation with full teams for judo in the Pan American Games in Santiago de Chile 2023, and has its sights set on the Olympic Games in Paris 2024, after participating in the Pan American Open in Lima, Peru.
The disciples of Julio Alderete (m) and Yordanis Arencibia (f) fulfilled in the Peruvian event the purpose of completing the men's and women's national teams for the Chilean competition, in which with only seven judoists they took third place by country, with three gold medals, one silver, one bronze, a fifth and a seventh place.
The Open was the last qualifying tournament for the continental multisport event and the pupils of Alderete and Arencibia made good use of it, led by coaches Antonio Becali (m) and Andrés Franco (f).
According to the latest update of the Pan American ranking, the 14 ticket holders for Santiago de Chile are Andy Granda, in the over 100 kg and first in the list, followed by Iván Silva (90 kg), Idalis Ortiz (+78 kg), Kaliema Antomarchi (78 kg), Maylín del Toro (63 kg) and Arnaes Odelín (57 kg), all second.
On the third step are Magdiel Estrada (73 kg) and Orlando Polanco (66 kg), on the fourth, Yurisleidy Hernández (52 kg) and Idelannis Gómez (70 kg), on the sixth, Liester Cardona (100 kg) and Danny Porte (60 kg), and on the eighth, Zamarit Gregorio (48 kg).
It should be noted that in judo the judo classifies name and not the division, and the 60 kg Cuban qualifier, Porte, left the delegation in Lima, and the other Cuban in the ranking, but far away, is Jonathan Charón, who is ranked twenty-fifth, so Cuba should not attend in that weight category.
It also highlights that there were 14 competitions that distributed points and that the pupils of Alderete and Arencibia had little participation, but enough to achieve the quotas.
With a view to Paris 2024, Cuba is in the qualification zone -one athlete per country-, also with little presence in events so far, Granda, in seventh place, Silva (11), Estrada (15), Maylín (20) and Idalis (21).
Arnaes (33) is in the zone for the Pan American quota (PC), but if he continues to compete with good results, he could join the group and give the PC place to one of his teammates (m and f), among them Idelannis (36).
Further behind are Keliema (43), Zamarit (48) and Yurisleidy (52), Polanco (60), Mkencie (75), Cardona (85), respectively.
