Cuban Olympic wrestling champion Ismael Borrero Molina surprises by defecting in Mexico

The Cuban Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling champion in Rio 2016, Ismael Borrero Molina, never made it to Acapulco, Mexico.

The island’s sports authorities confirmed Tuesday Borrero defected in Mexico prior to his participation in the Pan American Wrestling Championship. The Games are taking place in the famous resort city of Acapulco on the Mexican Pacific coast.

The 30-year-old Cuban athlete, world champion in Las Vegas (USA) 2015 and Nursultan (Kazakhstan) in 2019, was one of the main figures in this continental tournament along with several freestyle Olympic medalists from the United States.

Confirmation of Borrero’s escape came several hours after the event began, and was confirmed by various sources on social media.

His current whereabouts are unknown, although it is very likely Borrero’s road map is the same as of other Cuban athletes who take Mexico as a recurring springboard to enter the United States.

It is not clear if the star athlete fled from the Cuban delegation at the Mexican airport upon arriving from Havana in transit to Acapulco, or if he escaped from a Mexican state where a preliminary preparation base was being carried out.

Borrero’s trip to Mexico marked his international comeback after failing at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics where he finished 13th in his 67kg division after losing his first match against Ramaz Zoidze of Georgia.

The defeat surprised the experts, as the Cuban had beaten the Georgian several times before.

Two years ago, Borrero was announced in his country as the first case of a top-level Cuban athlete infected with COVID-19. According to official sources, he tested positive for COVID-19 after competing in a Pan American Championship in Ottawa, Canada.

Many blamed Borrero’s poor performance in Tokyo on his physical form, which was attacked twice by COVID-19, however an expert close to Cuban athletes told Around The Rings Borrero “seemed unmotivated... or overtrained.”

Borrero’s abandonment of the Cuban delegation to the Pan American Championship in Acapulco was described by the Cuban Sports Institute as a “regrettable” event.

“Borrero’s decision constitutes a serious indiscipline within the Cuban sports system and leaves aside the objectives of his team in this event, and in the four-year period leading up to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games,” it was stated in the published note.

Similar criticism was also received from the Cuban authorities by the Tokyo 2020 Olympic champion in canoeing, Fernando Dayán Jorge, after he escaped across the Mexican border to the United States in early March after leaving a training base.

Already in Miami, Dayán Jorge, 23, declared to a Hispanic television station his desire to continue practicing his sport and eventually represent the United States at the LA28 Olympic Games.

Olympic regulations require at least three years for changes of sports nationalities in the cases of athletes who have integrated national teams in their countries of origin, so Paris 2024 is ruled out for both Cuban athletes.

But Borrero is 30-years-old and an Olympic event in six years does not seem to be in his plans.

“For Paris, if he had gone, Borrero was no longer a winning card,” the source assures ATR.

“Now when he stops competing, he will surely increase his weight. He can serve as a sparring partner and also compete in European professional leagues. Nor do I rule out that he looks into Mixed Martial Arts”, he commented.

The “laboratory” successfully tested in Cuba in the sport of wrestling, and especially in the Greco-Roman style, based on the influence of the former Soviet Union, could sooner rather than later find a replacement for Borrero.

What is worrying is the emigration of high-performance Cuban athletes through different routes in the midst of the critical situation on the communist island.

In the case of the United States alone, high-ranking officials from this country have predicted that nearly 150,000 Cubans could arrive in the United States this year, according to the New York Times. Current figures are already registering the highest number seen in four decades.

The statistics are the highest since the well-known “Mariel exodus” in April 1980, when 125,000 Cubans emigrated to the United States on American ships from South Florida.

The Pan American Championship in Acapulco, which will run from today until Sunday, will offer qualifications for the World Cup in Belgrade, Serbia in September, and will also grant places for the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile 2023.

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