Cuban kayaker Fernando Dayán Jorge will compete again under the five rings, but this time representing the Olympic Refugee Team (EOR), after leaving the island in March 2022.
Dayán Jorge and the weightlifter Ramiro Mora Romero are the only ones from Cuba who are part of this select group, being the first, historically, to join it.
In the Tokyo 2020 edition, alongside his teammate Serguey Torres, Dayán Jorge won the gold medal in C2 1000 meters canoeing and set an Olympic record with a time of 3:24.995.
The two athletes achieved an excellent finish in their race, surpassing the duo from China that had been in the lead until the last 250 meters.
"We as a team worked very hard for a whole year, even when the pandemic hit. Every day the training was intense, and all the time we were thinking about the gold medal. And that is what happened," Jorge said to the press at that moment.
The man from Cienfuegos abandoned a training camp in Mexico in March 2022. This was imitated by his kayaking partner, Fidel Vargas. In less than two weeks, both athletes managed to cross the border and set foot on American soil.
During her journey to the United States, it was significant how she saved a fellow countrywoman from drowning in the Rio Bravo.
Its inclusion in the EOR sparked, in the days leading up to the start of the games in Paris, an angry reaction from the Cuban regime, a decision by the international Olympic authorities that the state media labeled as "manipulation."
Also, following the guidance from the offices of the Communist Party, sports commentator-narrator Pavel Otero, one of the spokespersons for Cuban television, criticized the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the inclusion of the two athletes in the EOR.
Fernando Dayán Jorge will compete next Wednesday, August 7, in the men's C-1 1000 m event at the Nautical Stadium of Vaires-sur-Marne, France.
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