Cuban Olympic Athletes in Paris, Ready to Continue Making History

The Cuban delegation participating in the upcoming Paris Olympic Games has already touched down in France. The expectations of the athletes of the Caribbean country are high; they hope to win more than 15 Olympic medals, including at least 5 gold medals.

The newspaper Granma reported that “the number of athletes who will compete in the first of these multisport meetings, the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, has already been defined. In short, there will be 62 athletes, eight fewer than in the previous edition of Tokyo 2020. However, the purpose of the Greater of the Antilles is the same as then, to finish among the top 20 in the medal standings of the great event.”

The truth is that some may be surprised that Cuba aspires to win a large number of medals, considering that it is a relatively small country with a population of about 11 million inhabitants. Nevertheless, Cuba has a powerful sporting tradition regarding the Olympic Games. Throughout its history, it has won 84 gold medals, 69 silver medals, and 82 bronze medals, for a total of 235 medals. If we take into account that it is the number of gold medals that determines a country’s ranking in the All-time Olympic Games medal table, Cuba ranks as the second most successful American country in the Olympic Games (only behind the United States), above much richer, larger and more populated countries such as Canada (70 gold, 111 silver, and 145 bronze), Brazil (37 gold, 42 silver, and 71 bronze), Argentina (21 gold, 26 silver and 30 bronze) and Mexico (13 gold, 24 silver and 35 bronze). In the All-time medal table of all countries, Cuba is currently in 18th place, ahead of countries such as Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, etc.

After the Revolution

The history of Cuba’s sporting glory is extremely irregular. Until the London Olympics in 1948, Cuba had won only 6 medals in total (4 gold and 2 silver), five of which were won by the skilled fencer Ramon Fonst in Paris in 1900 and in St. Louis in 1904. The next time it won a medal was in Tokyo in 1964: 1 silver medal.

But, from Mexico 1968 (where the Caribbean country won 4 silver medals) onwards, the growth in its athletic prowess was notable. Munich 1972: 3 gold, 1 silver, and 4 bronze; Montreal 1976: 6 gold, 4 silver, 3 bronze; Moscow 1980: 8 gold, 7 silver, 5 bronze: (Cuba did not participate in the Los Angeles 1984 and Seoul 1988 Olympics due to the protest of several socialist countries for the boycott against the Olympic Games held in the USSR); Barcelona 1992: 14 gold, 6 silver and 11 bronze medals, this being its most successful games in history. While the number of medals it won slightly dipped after Barcelona, Cuba still managed to remain among the top countries, obtaining great victories in Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000 (the second-best participation in its history), Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio de Janeiro 2016, and Tokyo 2020.

How can it be understood that there is such an abysmal difference between one period of sports history in Cuba and another? There is only one answer: the 1959 Revolution.

Sports under socialism

A fundamental part of the new socialist policies implemented by the revolutionary process was the enormous state investment in the promotion of sports on the island. Hundreds of sports centers were created all over the country; nutrition improved significantly, which made better physical development possible; the countries of the socialist camp collaborated with their sports knowledge, and many Cuban sportsmen and sportswomen trained in the USSR, in the German Democratic Republic, in Bulgaria, and elsewhere.

Cuba’s sports program was executed (and is still being executed) not as part of a plan to bring glory and fame to the country through victories in the Olympic Games. Rather, it could be said that the medals were a consequence of a broader and deeper social program, which was and is intended to develop society as a whole, not only through the development of knowledge and science but also through the development of people’s health through exercise.

In this regard, on August 14, 1971 (when Cuba was not yet the sports power it would become) Fidel Castro said in a tribute to the Athletes of the Cuban Sports Delegation: “Some people say that Cuba uses sports as an instrument of politics. And it is exactly the other way around: politics is an instrument of sport. That is to say, sport is not a means, but an end, as a human activity, as any activity that has to do with the human being and human welfare; just as education, culture, health, material living conditions, human dignity, feelings and spiritual values of man, are precisely the objectives of politics.”

Perhaps for this reason, in the same line as the sports policy of the USSR and China, sport is seen as an essential right and duty of the people, so the State has to guarantee the optimal conditions to carry it out: “Our Revolution,” Fidel affirmed, “has established the principle that sport is a right of the people, to which we could add that sport is also a duty of the people.”

Sports under blockade

However, Cuba’s merit in continuing to be a successful country in the Olympic Games is even greater than that of other socialist countries such as the USSR or China, because Cuba faces the economic blockade of the United States, which also implies a disadvantage for Cuban athletes, who cannot access the necessary sports equipment, travel to various countries in the world to train in high-performance centers, nor have access to certain indispensable products to train properly. This difficulty could be seen at the sports level when, after the fall of the USSR and the beginning of the “special period” in Cuba in the 1990s, Cuba’s sports growth did not continue to increase. This makes us think that, if the socialist camp had not fallen and if the United States had not tightened the economic blockade, Cuba would have eventually become, in terms of sports, one of the ten most successful countries in the history of the Olympic Games.

Despite this, Cuba continues to be the top medal-earning country in Latin America and outpaces many other countries with a higher GDP, larger population, and better economic conditions to support their national athletes. Several Cuban athletes such as boxers Teófilo Stevenson and Félix Savón (both three-time Olympic champions), volleyball player Mireya Luis (also a three-time gold medalist), athletes Javier Sotomayor and Iván Pedroso, judo fighter Driulis González, and four-time Olympic wrestling champion Mijain López, among many others, have unquestionably marked the history of the Olympic Games.

Their achievements are due to the sustained and sacrificed efforts that the Cuban State makes in favor of its athletes. However, it is no less true, although somewhat romantic, that Cuban athletes, being aware of this sporting injustice (as a consequence of the blockade), demonstrate their worth and ability more courageously despite all the adversities.