On March 25, 2024, the Cuban wrestler Yasmani Acosta Fernández (Matanzas, 1987) informed his Instagram followers about the start of "the most important and hardest preparation" for his upcoming challenge: the Paris Olympic Games. As he wrote almost five months ago, he planned to be several weeks out of Chile training at the highest level for the "final battle." We will see him compete for his qualification for the wrestling final in the 130 kg category on Tuesday, August 6, starting at 11:00 am.
"On the left side of my chest, beneath my fist, close to my heart, there you are Chile," wrote the athlete born in Agramonte, a locality in the Matanzas municipality of Jagüey Grande, who became a naturalized Chilean in 2018.
Yasmani Acosta arrives at the Paris Olympic Games at 36 years old with a career full of success in freestyle wrestling and Greco-Roman wrestling. A month ago, he participated in a competition in Poland to measure how he was doing in terms of body weight, as he needed to make adjustments before arriving in Paris, but also to correct details in order to leave the Olympic Games with a medal. "When there are strong rivals, that's when all those little details that need improvement come out," he said in an interview with CooperativaFM.
Yasmani Acosta started in this sport at the age of 10, and in his teenage years, he won gold at the 2008 Junior Pan American Championship and in Colombia in 2011. He then went on to compete at the Pan American Championship in Santiago de Chile in 2015 and stayed there. He did not return to Cuba. He spent two years working as a security guard and not training until he regularized his situation and returned to international competitions. By then, he already had residency at the Olympic Center in Chile.
From those early years, he remembers how much he missed his loved ones and the uncertainty of knowing whether he had made the right decision or not. "I'm very homey. I'm not one to go out, and I suffered quite a bit," he said in reference to the separation from his family.
As soon as he was able to compete for Chile, he forgot all that suffering. He immediately returned to the podium with a silver at the Pan American Games and a bronze at the World Championships. In the most recent Pan American Games in Santiago 2023, he earned a bronze, although he was aiming for gold. At the Tokyo Olympics, he did not lose any fights and finished fifth in a tiebreaker. They gave him an Olympic diploma that he never collected because he claims he didn't go there to participate but to win a medal.
Yasmani Acosta first invited his mother to Chile. He had not seen her in six years, and she arrived just when he was at the Olympic Games, and it was she who received him at the airport. Then he was able to enter Cuba and claims that he cried a lot when he saw his neighbors, the people from the neighborhood where he had grown up and where everyone took care of him as a child. "It's nice to be able to meet those people."
He speaks with bitterness about his experience at the games in the capital of Japan. "Tokyo still hurts me a lot, and it's something I'm going to use to my advantage. I feel that I wasn't favored by the referees, but I don't want to think that way. I don't want to think in terms of excuses. The referees are part of my opponents. It's difficult because they are strong opponents, and even if they don't want to, you have to fight against them and convince them," he reflected years later.
Yasmani Acosta is aware that when fighting in the Olympic Games, you are competing against the best. "The ones who make it arrive for a reason; they are the best in their region," and for that reason, he admits that victories are not by large margins because "the fights are very close." This time, in Paris, he will go out to fight knowing that the referee will do everything possible to take him down. That is why he plans to give it his all so that nothing is left in the hands of the officiating.
His future after the Paris Olympics is not yet determined. "I will evaluate it because I don't like going to the Games just to participate; I like going for a medal." Not because of age, as the Cuban Mijaín López is 42 years old and a four-time Olympic champion. Acosta explains that this is because, as athletes in higher weight categories, strength is measured more than physical or acrobatic skills, which tend to decline over time.
He knows he is at a disadvantage because his Cuban rivals train for eleven months beforehand, and he has only had four to prepare, but he doesn't want to cling to those excuses to justify anything. He wants a medal and will fight for it.
He is one of the 20 Cuban athletes competing in these Olympic Games in Paris under different flags. Thirteen nations benefit from the talent of those born on the island. Two other compatriots were selected to join the Refugee Team: canoeist Fernando Dayán Jorge and weightlifter Ramiro Mora.
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