havana/“Let’s go for the gold medal,” dice the Cuban boxer, Emmanuel Reyes Pla, The profit, after getting the bronze metal to Spain. “We are ready to give everything, make noise and even set the Eiffel Tower on fire if necessary.”
The Profeta beat Belgium’s Victor Schelstraete and thus gave the Iberian country a place on the podium after 24 years of Olympic drought in this discipline. This Cuban euphoria leads him to say: “Let’s raise even Napoleon from his grave to tell him that we are here.”
The 31-year-old man from Havana is focusing his preparation to face his fellow foreigners, who defends the flag of Azerbaijan, Loren Berto Alfonso. The winner will fight for gold in Paris 2024.
Six years ago, Reyes was looking for a place among the athletes of the Islands. Although he was part of the national team and got a decent rating in the 80 and 90 kilogram categories, he always felt like the second option. “Time passed and I could do two things: stay there and grow old or look for a way out,” he said. sports magazine Relief.
/ EFE
Reyes got tired of waiting and decided to leave Cuba in 2019. In A Coruña (Spain) he had a family, but to reach that destination he had to make a journey that began in Russia and continued through Belarus, Austria, Germany and France.
“Being communists, we were allowed to fly to Russia from Cuba. Much of the immigration that came to Europe took the same route. They went to Belarus, which had a border with Poland, and then you had to cross countries to get to the destination you wanted,” said El Profeta to the same sports newspaper.
The plan was not so simple, the boxer entered Belarus, where he tried to enter Poland, but realized that he would not be able to do so without papers, so he returned he to Moscow. After collecting money, he went to Austria, where they advised him to ask for asylum, but he did not expect that they would take him to a refugee camp where they kept him for a month, suffering “hunger and cold, said the man. Spanish newspaper he is Secret.
Due to his ignorance, Reyes Pla continued his journey by bus, despite the fact that he arrived in Germany, he was detained at the border with France and returned. “If you don’t have papers, they will stop you at the borders.” The athlete was imprisoned for more than a month in the country of Germany for carrying false documents and after his release he was deported to Austria.
With financial support from his uncle, in Austria he bought a ticket to Barcelona (Spain). He remembers thinking on the way to the airport that the police would ask for his passport and “everything would be over.” It wasn’t like that. “Then I found out that it wasn’t necessary when I entered the Schengen area. “This way I was able to get to Spain and be reunited with my family.” He met again with his grandmother, father and uncle, who runs the bar El Cubanito.
In poor physical condition, he appeared before Chano Planas, a promoter and trainer who welcomed him in A Coruña. Seeing that he was living irregularly in Spain, he suggested that he make his first trip in the professional field, where they would get permission. That is what they were doing when the Spanish coach Rafa Lozano called him and invited him to move to the Blume High Performance Center in Madrid, which represented a way to get the papers.
Nationalization for Reyes came in January 2020 and he was able to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. out of context.
/ Image Capture / The Uncheck
He discussed with a knock out to Kazakh Vasiliy Levit. His next competitor was Olympic champion Julio César La Cruz. For the coach Chano Planas, this Cuban mission was to stop the “worm” that abandoned them. An athlete from the Island won and shouted: “Country and life, no!; Country or we die!”.
Reyes had a sense of theft. “I feel like a winner, his record of achievements may have influenced him. Because of the judges I’m not getting the medal,” said The Prophet at the end of the fight.
The following months made them think about retirement. “I didn’t want to know about boxing, the decline was huge,” he said a diary AS. With the help of his teammates Ayoub Ghadfa and Jazi Jalidov he converted to Islam. “I always tell people that God and I understand each other, so don’t think anymore. I have always believed that there is someone who protects us and after reading a lot, I decided to convert. ”
The prophet wants to make a noise in Paris, he thinks about the gold medal, about being the best in his category at the Olympic Games.
