Former Cuban president Fidel Castro blamed Cuban sports leaders, including himself, for “falling asleep in the laurels” after Cuba’s humbling second-round exit from the World Baseball Classic.
Defending Classic champion Japan blanked Cuba 5-0 on Wednesday to eliminate them from the global showdown of Cuba’s most beloved sport, ending 50 years of podium finishes by Cuban squads.
Not since the 1959 Pan American Games had Cuba failed to finish in the top three of a major international tournament and not in 38 events had it failed to reach the final.
“The guilty are we who did not know to correct our errors in time,” Castro said in an article on the Web site Cubadebate.
Castro, 82, was critical of those who guided the squad, saying the team was “unobjectionably beaten and needed to get the pertinent lessons.”
“I must indicate that the direction of the team in San Diego was terrible,” Castro said.
Castro also blamed US organizers for including Cuba in a group with Japan and South Korea, what he declared was placing the world’s three best teams in the same bracket to ease the semi-final path for political rival US.
“The most important thing for the organizers was to eliminate Cuba, a revolutionary country that has resisted heroically and that could have won in the battle of the ideas,” Castro wrote.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
RSS