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61 Cuban athletes went to Paris 2024 to participate in 16 Olympic Games. Cuba won two gold, one silver, and six bronze medals. For Cuba, wrestling was a sport in which the country got 5 out of their 9 medals. Cuba's hero was Mijan Lopez, who became the first athlete has win five Olympic gold medals in an individual athlete event in five different editions. Lopez has achieved this feat at the age of 41.
Lopez steals show
Lopez, who retired with four gold medals and also achieved success in Tokyo 2020, has already had a brilliant career. In addition to those four Olympic medals, she already had five gold and three silver at the World Championships and five gold medals at the Pan American Championships. In such a situation, he changed his mind and came back and won again. That's why he was the star of the reception for the Cuban delegation in Havana. During this time, the first person who arrived to welcome the Cuban athletes was the country's first President Miguel Diaz-Canel. The President had arrived at the airport to welcome him. During this time, Lopez's mother Leonor was also present.
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His medal was in Greco-Roman wrestling, category -130 kg. Yusnelis Guzman, who lost to Vinesh Phogat, won the silver medal in wrestling -50 kg. Luis Orta won three bronze medals in -67 kg, Gabriel Rosillo in -97 kg and Milamy Marin in -76 kg. That wasn't Lopez's only gold medal in Paris. Erislandy Alvarez was the champion in the -63.5 kg boxing category. He was the other main athlete during the reception. At the same games, Arlen Lopez won the bronze medal in the -80 kg.
Cuba's other two medals were bronze medals. Taekwondo was also included in this. Rafael Alba finished third in the +80 kg category. The second place went to Yarislidis Cirilo, who was 23 seconds behind the silver medal and 24 seconds behind the gold medal in C1 200-meter sprint canoeing.
With this result, Cuba stood thirty-second in the Paris medal table. The glory days of this island nation in the Olympics are now far behind. At Barcelona in 1992, Cuba finished fifth in the medal table with 14 gold, six silver, and 11 bronze, behind only Russia, the United States, Germany, and China. Since then, his fortunes have waned somewhat. Nevertheless, López remains one of the greatest players in history.
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