The brother of Moisés David Torres Puig, the field hockey goalkeeper who left the Cuban delegation during the XXV Central American and Caribbean Games in Santo Domingo 2026, sought help this Sunday due to the vulnerable situation in which the young athlete finds himself.
"Please, this is my brother. His name is Moisés Torres Puig. He has no one and no passport. Please, support him," was the message that the family sent directly to the journalist Magdiel Jorge Castro, who shared it on his social networks.
The activist also called on the Cuban community in the Dominican Republic, as well as the institutions and officials of that country, to guide and assist the young man.
The legal situation of athletes who defect in Dominican territory presents specific complexities, which further exacerbates Torres Puig's vulnerability.
The athlete, originally from Las Tunas and the second goalkeeper of the Cuban men's field hockey team, became on Friday the first Cuban athlete to leave the delegation at these Central American Games. He was also the youngest player on the team.
The escape occurred while the team was attending as spectators a match of the Cuban women's national team at the stadium, a moment that the athlete took advantage of to carry out a carefully planned strategy.
"I was very nervous about being discovered. I felt like they suspected something, but I ordered ice, saying that I had hit myself with a ball during practice, and that calmed things down a bit," Torres Puig recounted in an audio clip shared by Dporto Sports News.
Once the guards lowered their guard, the athlete executed the second part of the plan. "Then I said I was going to throw the ice in a bin that was in the stadium hallway, and that’s when I managed to leave with the person who took me out. We exchanged clothes and walked until the UBER arrived," he explained in the same audio.
After escaping, Torres Puig tried to contact his teammates without success. "I have tried to reach out to some teammates, but no one has responded. I imagine it’s because of how tense the atmosphere must be," he said.
The case occurs in a context of massive defections in Cuban sports. Just days earlier, nine out of the 12 members of the canoeing team left the delegation during a training camp in Montreal, Canada, marking the largest defection recorded in that discipline in the history of Cuban sports.
Field hockey has its own history: five players left the delegation at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile in November 2023, and three more deserted in Barcelona in May of the same year.
Related videos:
Filed under: