Urged by victories and full of optimism, the Cuban men's volleyball team fought until the last point in the Nations League this Thursday, but ultimately succumbed to the host Slovenia (2-3) and now sees the possibility of qualifying for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games further away.
Despite the pressure from the audience, the Antillean team put up a tough fight against the competition's leader, and ended up losing with scores of 22-25, 25-20, 21-25, 31-29, and 8-15, in a very close match.
Although they only dropped 0.01 points in the world ranking, Coach Jesús Cruz's team missed the opportunity to close the gap with Serbia (256.50 points) and maintained twelfth place with 245.68 points in the race for the last spot in the Olympic tournament.
For the winners, opposite hitter Tonček Štern delighted his fans in a full room and celebrated 21 points, while the Caribbean team enjoyed the performance of the setter Marlon Yant, who scored 20 points.
After this result, Cuba still has few options to secure a spot in the gala round program, which is why they will go all out against Bulgaria on Friday and close out the third and final week of the Volleyball Nations League on Sunday against Poland.
So far, the teams that have secured their spots for the Olympic Games are: France, as the host; Germany, Brazil, Japan, United States, Poland, Canada, Italy, Slovenia, and Argentina, which just secured its spot today after Cuba's failure.
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