The regime refers to the inclusion of two Cubans in the Refugee Olympic Team as "manipulation."

The Cuban regime reacted angrily to the inclusion of two athletes from the island in the Refugee Olympic Team (EOR), a decision by international Olympic authorities that the official press labeled as "manipulation."

An article published in the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and signed by sports journalist Oscar Sánchez Serra, denounced the inclusion of canoeist Fernando Dayán Jorge Enríquez and weightlifter Ramiro Mora Romero in the ROC.

According to Sánchez Serra, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been "prey to manipulation" by including these athletes in the EOR for two reasons: the first being that athletes, like all humans, migrate. And the second is that the sports authorities of the Cuban regime do not punish them for it.

However, it is the official press that once again sins with manipulation, since it is well known that Cuban athletes who do not use institutional channels to sign contracts abroad and decide to do so on their own, are banned by the authorities from competing under the national flag.

In March 2022, Olympic canoeing champion Jorge Enríquez left the delegation he was traveling with to Mexico for a training base. The National Commission of that discipline qualified the decision of the athlete from Cienfuegos as a "serious indiscipline" and added that it "undermines years of intense work and aspects of the development strategy of that sport towards the Olympic cycles of Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028".

In August 2021, the athlete was proclaimed Olympic champion in the C2 1000 meters race alongside veteran Serguey Torres. This marked the first Cuban crown in Olympic canoeing, which had previously achieved three silver medals.

Jorge Enríquez "has turned his back on the commitment to new results for his sport and his people," stated the National Canoeing Commission after his abandonment of the team in Mexico.

The 25-year-old canoeist, who emigrated to the United States through the southern border route, recounted in an interview his perception of the Cuban reality after his return from the Tokyo Olympic Games held in August 2021, a month after the historic protests of July 11 of that year, known as 11J.

"After spending three months on vacation after the Olympic Games is when I really got involved in society, and where I really experienced what all Cubans go through," said Jorge Enríquez. "There were many moments when I was disappointed, when I did not agree with the things that were happening," he emphasized.

During the journey, the canoeist captured the attention of international media by assisting a young Cuban woman while crossing the Rio Grande. "What followed was a challenging period during which he had to work and train simultaneously in difficult conditions. Fernando now resides in Florida and trains daily in a canal near his home with the support of his coach, Alain," the IOC states in the athlete's biographical note.

Since then, the canoeist has persevered in his dream of returning to international competition. His talent was demonstrated in the United States by winning four gold medals at the National Sprint Canoeing Championship held in Sarasota, Florida.

In the case of Mora Romero, the Cuban weightlifter who holds multiple records in the 89 and 96 kg weight categories, landed in London from Havana as a trapeze artist for a circus in 2019. In 2023, he was proclaimed the national champion of the United Kingdom in weightlifting, record included.

According to the officialist journalist who signs the article in Granma, "Cuba has already had Olympic champions under a flag that is not theirs, such as Pedro Pablo Pichardo, in Tokyo 2020, in the triple jump; in Paris 2024, the now Portuguese will have his compatriot Andy Díaz, now Italian, as a rival."

In 2016, we saw Osmani Juantorena in the Italian volleyball team, and the same will happen in July with 'el polaco' Wilfredo León. At the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, there were several duels between Cubans representing their homeland and those representing another country," said Sánchez Serra.

However, the inclusion of Dayán Jorge and Mora Romero in the EOR expresses the "complicity" of the IOC and the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) with "the aggressive and criminal policy of the United States against Cuba, which has used talent theft and organized irregular migration, with all its human cost on top, because they do not care about life, with the aim of discrediting it, attacking one of its great achievements: its sports movement."

"Cuba is not the one using sports as politics," stated Sánchez Serra. "It is the empire defeated for 65 years that is bothered by the fact that, after trying to kill it by starvation, leaving it without fuel, speculating with its finances against an entire nation, a black person like Mijaín López rises, or someone like Idalys Ortiz at the top of the podium reserved for the rich world, for those who exploit," concluded the propagandist, accusing the United States of "racism in sports," the country with the most black Olympic medalists in history.