94 Cuban athletes qualified for London Games

HAVANA - Cuba has 94 athletes from 14 disciplines qualified for the 2012 Olympic Games, an official with Cuba's National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER) said Wednesday.

Norge Marrero, director of High Performance at INDER, said that 51 days before the beginning of London 2012, track and field is the discipline with the largest number of participants (33), followed by wrestling (12), judo (9), boxing (8), rowing (6), boating (6), cycling (4 ), shooting (4), weightlifting (4), taekwondo (3), diving (2), swimming (1), table tennis (1) and archery (1).

In track and field, the best known Cuban athletes are 110-meter hurdles Olympic champion and world record holder Dayron Robles, discus thrower Yarelis Barrios, Olympic runner-up and Pan American champion in Guadalajara 2011, and decathlon athlete Leonel Suarez, world championship runner-up and Pan-American champion.

Other qualified athletes are boxers Lazaro Alvarez and Julio Cesar La Cruz, wrestler Mijain Lopez, shooter Eglys Cruz and canoeists Serguei Torres and Karel Aguilar. All of them are Olympic medal or world championship medal winners.

Marrero stressed that the preparation of the Cuban delegation "is going satisfactorily" .

Cuban sports officials expect to complete a delegation of about 135 members, a lower number than the 165 gathered four years ago in Beijing, where Cuba finished 28th in the medal table with 24 medals, 2 gold, 11 silver and 11 bronze.

Cuba's performance in Beijing was the poorest one after Barcelona 1992, when it achieved its best performance with 31 medals, reaching the fifth position in the table.

Previous to Beijing, in Athens 2004, Cuba sent 161 participants in 17 disciplines and finished 11th with 27 medals.

Cuba has won a total of 194 medals in its Olympic history.

According to the Cuban media, Cuba targets at 20 medals in London.