Pan-American Sports Festival

Cuba will participate with 210 athletes in the Pan-American Sports Festival in Mexico, whose first phase begins on Friday, the weekly Jit sport magazine reported in its on-line edition.

Olympic champion and 4-times world champion of wrestling, Mijaín Lopez, leads the Cuban delegation, which will compete in 20 of the 23 disciplines convened.

According to the Director of High Performance National of the National Institute of Sports, Norge Marrero, the Caribbean nation will participate with its "main figures" in the 12 sports that will give a berth for the 2015 Pan-American Games in Toronto, including wrestling, canoeing, rowing and archery.

"In other sports we will take advantage to achieve that our 2nd and 3rd figures gain experience," said Marrero who mentioned among such disciples, boxing, whose main aces won the 4th World Series of Boxing and will not attend the Mexican event.

He also considered the event as a "fundamental" training for the Cuban athletes in view of Veracruz 2014, in Mexico, next November. In addition to Lopez, in the first stage of the Festival, Cuba will be represented by stars such as Iván Cambar and Yoelmis Hernández (weightlifting), Liván López, Reinieris Salas and Pablo Shorey (wrestling), and Angel Fournier (rowing).

The Mexican event, that will have other two stages in August (2 sports) and in September (8), has full endorsement of the Pan-American Sports Organization and meets about 5,000 athletes from 41 countries, including regional powers like the U.S., Brazil and Canada.

Basketball
The Cuban men's basketball team will debut against Panama at the Centrobasket Tournament opening from August 1st-7th, to be held in the Mexican city of Nayarit.

The Cubans, 2nd in the recently concluded Caribbean Tournament held last weekend in the British Virgin Islands, will play in Group A of CentroBasket, to face Jamaica on day 2, Costa Rica the 4th, and the Dominican Republic on the 5th within the qualifying round.

Group B is made up of Puerto Rico, Mexico, El Salvador, the monarch of the Caribbean, Bahamas, and U.S. Virgin Islands.

According to the competing system of the tournament, the top two in each group advance to the semifinals and ensure the ticket to the Olympic Qualifying 2015, while the first 7 teams qualify for 2014 Veracruz.

Brazil 2014

The FIFA Medical Commission announced today that there has not been any positive case for doping so far in Brazil 2014 Soccer World Cup.

In its report, the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA) explains that in all 58 games analyzed, all control tests to which players were submitted have come back negative.

Of the matches held, the results of quarter finals between Netherlands-Costa Rica and Argentina-Belgium are due to be known in the next 24 hours.

Doctor Jiri Dvorak, head physician of the FIFA, explained in a press conference that for the first time in World Cup history, all players had been submitted to the necessary control tests in order to know if they had used forbidden substances.
Control tests began before the championship and in particular, there were 777 players who were examined by the doctors in charge of doing the tests of blood and urine.

For the first time, all the results of those participating in a World Cup are under control while those who were not present in control tests before the tournament, also passed their tests later on. By the end of the games, not one player would have gone without being tested, he reported.

He also announced that for the first time in a World Cup, each player has had his biological profile, including blood, urine and steroids data, which makes it easy to monitor organisms looking for disorders.

Finally, FIFA said the samples will be frozen for 8 to 10 years to be able to reassess the tests to search for substances that are currently undetectable.