Baseball
Pinar del Rio suffered another hard blow in the grueling struggle to gain access to Cuba's Baseball post-season after being defeated twice on Sunday by Isla de la Juventud and take away 2 games from the Classification Zone.
Isla de la Juventud's Los Piratas showed again to be strong rivals to take into account, especially when playing at home, and surpassed the current national champion.
Ulfrido García disseminated 3 hits and 1 clean in 6 episodes as opener, while Danny Aguilera took his 10th salvage in the Isla de la Juventud's 4-1 victory, including first-baseman Luis Felipe Rivera's two RBI's for the winners. In the 2nd game, Los Piratas closely won by 1-0 thanks to Jorge Luis Barcelán's decisive trailer in the 10th in a game marked by excellent job of opener Reimundo Vázquez and closer Javier Vázquez, the latter winner after tolerating just 1 hit in 3 chapters.
After these results, the current monarch Pinar del Rio fell to the 6th place while Isla de la Juventud ascended to the 3rd spot, to the detriment of Industriales, which suffered 2 defeats, also, against the visitors by 3-2 and 5-3, in a positive journey for the closing veteran José Ángel García, who added 2 rescues in both caps to reach 18 of them and being consolidated as the top leader in this department.
In turn, Granma was put just 1 game from the top after knocking down the leader, Matanzas, by 16-5, thanks to unstoppable offensive of 19 hits including 2 homers of Roel Santos, Guillermo Avilés, Alfredo Despaigne and Yordanis Samón each.
Last but not least, Ciego de Ávila lost space when falling 11-3 to the straggler of Holguín, with the 6th triumph of star Norge Luis Ruiz and outstanding performance of Reutilio Hurtado and Oscar del Rosario with 1 homer per capita.
Thus, Matanzas leads now with 43 and 25, followed by Granma (42-26), Isla de la Juventud and Industriales (38-30), Ciego de Ávila (37-31), Pinar del Río (36-32), Artemisa (35-33) and Holguín (31-37).
Cycling
Cuban racing cyclist Lisandra Guerra won the bronze medal in Paris at the Track Cycling Championships of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.
Guerra was led by Australian Anna Meares and Dutch Shanne Branspennincx, who took gold and silver, respectively. Guerra's was the only medal pocketed by Cuba in this championships where her Cuban peer, Marlies Mejias, 22, ended 5th in the omnium.
"I'm not happy. It went bad for me in the qualifying competition yesterday. I'm leaving sad for not getting a medal. I was ready to do it," she lamented. The gold in the omnium was won by Australian Annette Edmondson (192 points), the silver medal went to British Laura Trott (176) and the bronze to Dutch Kirsten Wild (175).
