MAG Senior men Pan Am live now

[sce]

on Link Removed

 

[profmom]

Was able to catch a bit of this -- what a great meet they had!

 

[Kidsgym]

Was there all three days . What can I say we don't host competitions like that often so for sure we wouldn't miss it and what a show it was . Loved today's final. high bar was out of this world, so as girls floor and beam . Loved teams competition as well. Can't wait for next year. Tickets coming on sale soon.(mid September )☺

 

[profmom]

After watching yesterday and today, I think it is a great tragedy of the sport that the Cubans can't go to Worlds.

 

[Kidsgym]

Why not? Sorry maybe stupid question

 

[profmom]

Apparently they just don't have the resources. They are focusing on Pan Ams 2015 instead.

 

[profmom]

Holy crap! Two of them defected and are now in Miami, presumably training with Yin Alvarez! Link Removed

 

[Popcorn]

I love Yin Alvarez. Does everyone know the story? It's completely amazing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/s...-for-an-olympic-gold.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

[J&A's mom]

I can't read Spanish, so forgive me. How does this help them go to Worlds? The story I first read made it seem like they did this so they could go to worlds.....

 

[skschlag]

Apparently CUba doesn't go to worlds. They don't have teh resources

It can translate if you are in Google. Still hard to read though.

 

[profmom]

It's been a looooong time, but here's my best attempt at a translation. Fortunately the text is pretty simple:

A second gymnast fled the Cuban team, which participated in a competition in Toronto, says Channel America TV, naming Ernesto Vila Sarria, who was considered one of the primary promising figures of the sport in the Island. He came on Sunday to Miami.

Vila, champion on floor exercise in the 2010 Youth Olympic games, said that the other member of the national team who fled in Canada is Luis Alberto Oquendo Enriquez.

The Cuban team had come to Toronto to participate in a gymnastics championship, a preparation for the Panamericans in 2015. Neither Vila nor Oquendo competed.

“We arrived on Monday the 26th at the hotel at 12:30, and at 1:00 I fled,” he said in a statement to America TV.

The young man, whom official press outlets described last year as the greatest gymnast of the moment in Cuba, was hidden for several days in a house of a friend in Canada, before crossing the border with the United States through Niagara Falls.

This was the only international trip made this year by the Cuban gymnastics team.

“I am in search of a better future,” said Vila, who is 20 years old. He added that he hopes the United States will open its doors so that “I can go to the World Championships, Olympic Games, and competitions that I could not go to” from the Island, where gymnastics has been in decline for years.

According to the same channel, Vila has already reunited in Miami with one of his idols, Cuban Danell Leyva, who competed with the United States in the London Olympics, and who won a bronze medal.

The men’s team that participated in the competition in Canada ended up in third place.

 

[J&A's mom]

The men's team is so deep, and immigration laws are so tough. I would think they would have stayed in Canada?

 

[profmom]

It's been a while since I have looked carefully, but I think Cubans still get a get-in-for-free card on the basis of political asylum rules. And in these particular cases, the well founded fear element would likely be easy to substantiate.