• Submitted by: manso
• Sports
• 08 / 22 / 2010

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2004 Athens Olympics runner-up, Mexican Ana Gabriela Guevara, before returning last Monday to the DF, said in Cuba that if she had run the 400m event at the 2008 Beijing Olympics she would have had possibilities even to win the gold medal.

Guevara, who launched at Varadero’s Golf Club the first Cup baptized with her name to join the efforts of the Tourism Ministry of Cuba to further promote tourism with Mexico, asked about her possibilities at the Chinese showcase if she hadn’t retired in January 2008 due to, according to her, serious conflicts with the Mexican Athletics Federation, she answered that “maybe she could win a medal”.

“When I was watching the final at the “Bird’s Nest” Stadium and commenting it for a sport channel, and saw how the race developed I was very annoyed because it was a very easy race. If I had known the event would be like this when I was taking the decision to retire, I wouldn’t have retired, because there were possibilities to win gold, the race was very slow, a strategy very badly planned by the US runner, the favorite”, she said.

The event was won by British Christine Ohuruogu, with 49.62 seconds, followed by Jamaican Shericka Williams (49.69) and US Sanya Richards (49.93).

“But well, as we say in Mexico, “if” does not exist and you have to look forward, I am not going to stop, things are like that, I hope I could always have the certainty to know how things will go ahead to be able to guess them and to change the routes… but sport is like that”, she added.

Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism has passed important projects for golf development on the island, not only with tournaments, of which it has already organized several showcases along with hotel chains settled on the island, and tour operators, but also with the perspective of creating some 20 golf courses across the archipelago in the coming years and Guevara said she was willing to cooperate in that purpose in appreciation for the Cuban trainers who helped her become a world athletics star.

The Cup, the first of five programmed, will take place from October 13-17 and bring together over 120 Mexican participants, most of them non-professionals, who will be able to appreciate the important Cuban infrastructure for the practice of this discipline that according to Guevara, she developed it as an alternative sport, while she remained active in athletics where she won the 2003 World

Championship in Paris and was Pan Am champion in her modality for three years in a row.

She admitted that before playing golf it looked a “very boring sport”, but later she learned that it “demands to much concentration”, a fundamental factor in any discipline. In golf you either fill yourself with patience and carry on, or give it up there”, she commented.

In spite of her praises, she criticized the inclusion of golf and rugby sevens in the Olympic program and the exclusion of baseball and softball. “They’ve excluded a sport that is a tradition for many countries like ours and yours”, she said in allusion to baseball

“While golf is a sport that is going to be contested among very few countries in the 2012 London Games, the same as rugby, where almost the entire Latin America is being completely ruled out”.

She commented her concern over the delay in the construction of the athletics stadium for the Pan American Games in Guadalajara, slated for next October, “The challenge after the event is that the facilities do not remain as “white elephants”, she said.

And while “golfer Ana” was saying goodbye on her return to Mexico confident in “captivating Mexicans so that they come to visit the island”, and even said in advance she’d invite the famous former player and compatriot, Lorena Ochoa, retired since last April, former “sprinter Ana”, the best of all time in Mexico, admitted that “it will be a titanic work in her country to find her successor on the tracks.

By Michel Hernández

Cubasi Translation Staff