The world of Cuban sports is in mourning, as Diamela Puente Salas, considered one of the best softball players on the Island, died this weekend at 43 years of age.
According to information shared on social networks, the athlete, who participated in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, died on Saturday, March 9, as a result of cardiac arrest.
“Today the Cuban sports movement is dressed in mourning as it suffers the loss of the tremendous athlete, best human being, good daughter, good mother and wife,” the account of Alejandro Floro Cebreco Duvergel, photographer of the Sports Institute, reported on social networks. Physical Education and Recreation (INDER) in Santiago de Cuba.
The athlete’s death was mourned in the Santiago municipality of Palma Soriano, where she was originally from. This territory paid tribute to the softball player, who had decided to retire during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she was about to turn 40.
The publications that lamented her departure revealed some of the most important details about the athlete, noting that she left behind a young son after a career that earned her two bronze medals at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg in 1999 and Guadalajara in 2011.
Likewise, the retired athlete won four medals in the Central American and Caribbean Games, these were one gold in Maracaibo (1998), two silver in Cartagena de Indias (2006) and Barranquilla (2018), and one bronze in Veracruz (2014).
He also participated in three World Cups, in which Cuba finished in 9th place in 2010 (Caracas, Venezuela), 12th place in 2012 (Whitehorse, Canada) and 16th place in 2016 (Surrey, Canada).
Puente Salas also played an important role in the 2013 World Games in Cali, Colombia, where Cuba won a coveted gold medal after the performance of its athletes.
Sports detraining
While the specific causes why the athlete suffered cardiac arrest have not been revealed, some users on social networks emphasize that this is a risk to which high-performance athletes who stop practicing their sports are exposed.
In this sense, they emphasize the importance of them practicing the so-called “sports detraining”, which consists of a gradual reduction of sports activity in the lives of athletes, which allows a partial or complete loss of physiological, anatomical and of performance achieved over a lifetime of practicing high-performance sports.
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