The first gold medal shines on Cuba’s Olympic neck. It is a medal that arrives late, that arrives alone, that arrives euphoric, bittersweet, but that arrives. Mijaín López went up to the stage of the Champ de Mars stadium with the red jersey on Tuesday afternoon, sure of getting his fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal against the predictions of the analysts and the Sports Illustratedwhich rather predicted a bronze for him, and against the truth that he is 41 years old compared to the young bodies that he faced and said goodbye to, one by one, on the blue carpet of Paris 2024.
Neither South Korean Lee Seungchan, 28, could snatch the gold from Lopez, nor Iranian Amin Mirzazadeh, 26, nor Azerbaijani Sabah Shariati, 35. It was in the hands of another Cuban to take the medal, take away his record and send him home as he arrived, as a four-time champion. Today, both reached the center of the mat, embraced each other, and a referee announced Mijaín, from Cuba, and Yasmani Acosta, also from Cuba, but who fought for Chile. In the fight, Mijaín, tough as nails, did not allow a single point to be scored. It was a beautiful and also sad dance: Cuba against Cuba itself. At times it did not seem that Mijaín was pushing his friend, but rather hugging him, that he was not wrestling with his former training partner, but rather welcoming him. Acosta, who had never won a fight against him before, did not do so now either.
In the early hours of 2015, Acosta, 36, left the Cuban delegation at the Hotel Fundador, without a passport or money, walked to a corner where a van was waiting for him, and disappeared silently, as many Cuban athletes have done in recent years. It is said that he had to work as a security guard in hotels and parties in Santiago de Chile, that he taught wrestling classes at an amateur school, that he earned his living as best he could, that he had a long road to get to Paris. Now he is competing for a medal with López, his idol, his friend, his fellow countryman, his shadow. The day he left the hotel, he did so, he said, to get rid of the weight that the name of Mijaín López represents.
“I was trapped by Mijaín. He is my friend, but he always traveled to important competitions,” he said then. “That prevented me from advancing in my sports career. I decided to make a decision.” Acosta is no less Cuban than Mijaín, and these days, waiting for a medal in the midst of so much disaster, it seems as if he were, as if Cuba had left him orphaned of a people and of fansIf he had taken the title from the “Horseshoe Giant” to give it to the Chileans, the Cubans would have lamented it as if it had been the South Korean, the Iranian or the Azerbaijani. Acosta had his entire country praying for his defeat and the victory of Mijaín, who is now retiring from a long career just days away from turning 42.
Mijaín’s victory has stirred up all kinds of emotions: there are those who celebrate him loudly, and those who wanted to see him dethroned from the podium of Greco-Roman wrestling, without the possibility of surpassing the four golds of the Americans Michael Phelps, Carl Lewis, Al Oerter, Vincent Hancock and Katie Ledecky, or of the Dane Paul Elvstrom, or of the Japanese wrestler Icho Kaor. The latter, those who do not want him to win, have reminded him of the slap he gave to a Cuban opponent in Chile, who was shouting anti-system slogans and waving the Cuban flag during last year’s Pan American Games. They have criticized him for dedicating his fourth Olympic title to “our undefeated commander in chief.”
It was what Fidel Castro always did: hang the medals of Cuban athletes on his olive-green chest. He boasted about sports at all times, rubbed shoulders with Maradona, and put his chin out for Muhammad Ali to hit. He boasted as his own trophy Alberto Juantorena, glory of athletics, or Teófilo Stevenson, “gentleman of the sport.” ring”, or the team that was the spectacular Morenas del Caribe. How was a small island, besieged by the United States, located on the map of the Cold War, able to produce athletes of the highest level? And the truth is that it was like that for a long time. In Barcelona 1992, Cuba finished fifth in the Olympic medal table, taking 14 golds. Since Munich 1972, the country was almost always in the top 10. top 10 of the countries with the most medals, on par with any power: eighth place in Atlanta 1996, ninth in Sydney 2000, and eleventh in Athens 2004.
At the beginning of the Revolution, Fidel set the course for what sport would become in the country. He opened schools and sports centers, put an end to gambling “in all its commercial forms” and declared it “the right of the people.” The Revolution invested in athletes, bet on their careers, and any achievement, any gain, any medal was always the work of the Revolution: “Sport is not an instrument of politics in our country; but sport is in our country a consequence of the Revolution,” he said. Sport also served to justify, give meaning to and play around in his eternal struggle with the United States: “Some day our athletes will also surpass Yankee athletes and demonstrate that there is no people superior to another, but there are ideas and concepts superior to others, that there are social systems superior to others.” For years, Cuban athletes dedicated their achievements and medals to Fidel and the Revolution.
There were decades of glory in Cuban sport. As the country collapsed economically and politically, sport also collapsed: in 2008 it ranked 19th in Beijing, 16th in London 2012, 18th in Rio 2016, and 14th in Tokyo 2020. Sixty-five years later, we have the following country, and it could not be otherwise: a delegation in 63rd place in the Paris Olympic medal table; so far two athletes who defected on French soil and set off to explore the uncertain future of the emigrant, like the more than half a million Cubans in the last almost three years; a delegation made up of only 62 athletes competing for Cuba, the smallest in the country at the Olympic Games since Tokyo 1964; 21 Cubans competing for other flags, and one on the Olympic refugee team, who abandoned the delegation in Mexico and crossed the border into the United States, something that particularly angered the Government of Havana, whose Olympic Committee requested his “immediate expulsion” from the Paris Olympics.
Cuban athletes competing for other countries never cease to bring joy to the family living room, which gathers together, like rarely before, to watch sports. It sounds strange that Jordan Díaz is from Spain, or Melissa Vargas from Turkey, or Ana Laura Portuondo from Canada or Frank Chamizo from Italy, but it is the country that we are, like the literature professor who now teaches at an Ivy League university, or the actor from Havana who is now the face of Televisa, or the driver of an Uber in a taxi. expressway from Florida.
Today Cuba faced off against Cuba itself. But it was not Mijaín López against Yasmani Acosta, who are united by a brotherhood that they have even shown in the ring, between spider-like movements, passivity, pushes, that strength between bodies of almost two meters and 130 kilograms. Today a Cuba from within faced off against a Cuba from without, a Cuba that was against a Cuba that does not exist, a Cuba in Paris against a Cuba in memories.
Mijaín will leave France as one of the best athletes of modern times. Today he gave pride to a dispersed, diasporic people, who celebrate him, point him out, and adore him as the Olympic God that he is. These are the last Olympics for Mijaín, who had already stolen all the gold from Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio de Janeiro 2016, and Tokyo 2020. The analysts did not announce his victory, but the Cubans never questioned it.
Neither his coach Raúl Trujillo, nor his training partner Ángel Pacheco, who in May left the Cuban delegation in Croatia, and who was supposed to accompany him in his preparation for Paris. “I feel bad for not being able to help you in the last stage of your career,” Pacheco told Mijaín when he decided he would not return to Cuba. “I had to make my decision in order to move forward.” After reminding him that there could be no other Olympic winner than him on the mat, Pacheco made the prediction: “And remember this, Paris is going to tremble.” And Paris did tremble.
