Baseball

Ciego de Ávila dawned consolidated on top of the 54th Cuban Baseball Championship after whitening the modest team of Cienfuegos by 2-0 on Wednesday and become the 1st team with 10 wins in the current Season.

Starter Dachel Duquesne added his 2nd victory for the cause of the Ciego de Avila's Los Tigeres after disseminating 5 hits in 6 and a half entries with the 3rd rescue of Yadir Rabí, while Yasiel Morales was charged with the failure.

Raúl González and José A. García drove in 1 per capita to lead the winning drive to qualify for the 2nd round of the National Series, after being left out of this elite in the previous edition.

Meanwhile, Industriales continued to hunt for the leaders to beat 9-6 to Granma, with Frank Monthiet's 1st win and 4th rescue of Yohandri Portal, while the fast Alain Tamayo took the loss.

The versatile Lourdes Y. Gourriel led again the capital's Los Azules attack with 5-3, 2 runs scored and 3 trailers, to guide the department with 14 RBIs.

The highlight of yesterday was the surprising victory of Artemisa over Villa Clara by a 5-4 closed margin to be ratified in the 3rd seat, 2 games from the leader Ciego de Ávila and only 1 behind Industriales. The promising reliever Yunieski García came to 4 hits and a leader of that section, besides adding 3 saves, standing as the key figure of his team to which have contributed to 8 victories.

In other results, Isla de la Juventud stunned 7-1 to runner-up Matanzas, Holguin exceeded 4-1 to Sancti Spiritus, Camagüey blanked 5-0 to Santiago de Cuba while Guantanamo ordered battered Mayabeque by 10-6. México.

Volleyball (m)

The Cuban men's volleyball team maintained its unbeaten pace today defeating Dominican Republic 3-0 in the 4th day of qualifying for the II U-23 Pan-American Volleyball Cup taking place at the Sport City Coliseum in Havana.

According to the website of the contest, the Cubans won 25-19, 25-13, 25-22, highlighting Osmani Uriarte, top scorer of the match with 15 points.

In the other 2 challenges on Wednesday, Mexico and Guatemala defeated 3-0 and 3-1 to Trinidad and Tobago, and El Salvador, respectively. Cuba defeated El Salvador 3-0 the previous day but made 20 errors.

Tomorrow is the last day of the preliminary phase, covering Trinidad and Tobago-El Salvador, Guatemala and Cuba, and Dominican Republic vs. Mexico duels.

Chess

Cuban GM Leinier Dominguez drew for the 3rd consecutive time, now with Azeri Shakriyar Mamedyarov, during the 6th round of the Grand Prix Baku 2014.

Leinier (2751 Elo points) remained 9th among the 12 contestants with 2.5 points while Mamedyarov (2764) is 11th with half unit less.

The current leader is the Italian Fabiano Caruana (2844), who defeated Russian Peter Svidler (2732), and now owns 4.5 units and is escorted by Israeli Boris Gelfand (2748), who drew with Russian Sergey Karjakin (2767), and totals 4 points.

The other winners of the day were the Azeri Teimour Radjabov (2726) and Uzbek Rustan Kasimdzhanov (2706), who beat Russians Alexander Grischuk (2797) and Dmitry Andreikin (2722), respectively, and both accumulate 3.5 units, while American Hikaru Nakamura drew with Russian Evgeny Tomashevsky (2701).

After the first half of the tournament the standings is commanded by Caruana (4.5 points), Gelfand (4), Radjabov, Kasimdzhanov and Nakamura (3.5), Tomashevsky, Karjakin and Svidler (3), Leinier (2.5), Grischuk and Mamedyarov (2), and Andreikin is in the bottom with only 1.5 units.

Judo

The traditional powerhouse in judo, Cuba will attempt to confirm its dominance in the game by winning the largest number of possible titles between both sexes.

According to the president of the Cuban Judo Federation, Rafael Manso, the purpose is to achieve 13 gold and 5 bronze medals out of the 18 possible as the teams are very strong with our main athletes in both sexes, so we hope to dominate the medal standings, he said.

In this regard, he pointed out that the bronze medals were determined by taking into account the quality of the Cuban judokas and the main rivals, and in some cases instead of bronze, it might be silver, depending on the draw.

In this regard, he complained that in the recent Panamerican Sports Festival, based in Mexico like the Games, Cubans were almost always pitted first against the Brazilians, who are the other powerful force in the Panamerican arena.

As usual in this kind of competition, team competition will also occur, and Cuba is determined to sweep the prizes in both genders; in any case, Cuba is the team to beat in Veracruz, and all the judokas coming from other countries to compete, know it, concluded the official.