Cubans were amazed on social networks when they saw the state in which theformer boxer Hipólito Ramos, who was Olympic boxing runner-up at the 80 Moscow games.
Darwin Felipe Parada Colina, a Cuban resident in Venezuela, shared a photo of the former boxer, now 67 years old, sitting on a wall in the street with a bag in his hand.
The image was published on the profile ofFacebook by Hiram Quiñones, a resident of Miami, where several users in the comments revealed that Hipólito has been in the Andean country for years, where things have not gone well for him, and they were moved by his current situation.
"It's incredible the situation our friend from Pinar del Río is in," lamented one.
"My God...is unrecognizable"said a woman.
"I'm from Pinar del Río and he really doesn't even look like him; what a shame, wow, he's a good human being," said a nurse.
"I knew a long time ago that he was in Venezuela having a bad time, I don't know what happened to him,It hurts to see it so deteriorated"said another Pinar del Río resident from Florida.
"I knew him since he was a child,tremendous athlete, what a shame to see him like this"commented another émigré.
Hipólito Ramos won the silver medal in the light flyweight category (less than 48 kg), losing on points (2-3) to the Russian Shamil Sabirov at the Moscow Olympics.
When this photo of the former boxer became known, a woman confirmed that he is in the Venezuelan municipality of Sucre. "When I was on a mission there I saw him. I am a friend of his children, he was working boxing in a sports area," she clarified.
Two Internet users expressed theirdesire to contact Hipólito and asked for help to locate him.
Others remembered what has happened to many Cuban athletes, who after giving so much glory to the national sport, end their lives forgotten.
"It is because of these same things that all athletes leave the country, because of the lack of attention to those who rejected millions of dollars for following the revolution and the revolution itself leads them to anonymity," stressed a network user.
In recent years there has been a proliferation ofcomplaints of Cuban sporting glories due to the abandonment of the authorities.
In November 2022, theFormer world youth javelin champion Marisleysis Duharte Morell recounted the abandonment of the government in the midst of his battle against scleroderma, a chronic autoimmune rheumatic disease that causes the skin to become thick from a buildup of scar tissue that also causes damage to internal organs.
The former athlete from Santiago then reported that at INDER "no one remembers me, or who I am, or who I was, much less what I contributed as an athlete to the nation."
Months before, the runner Osvaldo Lara, one of the main sprinters that Cuba had in the 70s and 80s, denounced thatThey had forgotten him, "with so many years in the national team".
Lara, then 66 years old, survived with 700 pesos that he received for one of his medals. He lived in a third-floor apartment in Havana and suffered from hypertension and diabetes, in addition to the consequences of a stroke suffered years before.
"They don't come to see him. I went to the municipal department of attention to athletes and nothing came of it. They have never come from INDER. Nor from the National Athletics Commission. Eeeeeeh!, those never," his wife stressed in an interview with the weeklyWorkers.
What do you think?
COMMENTFiled in: