The President of the Republic held a meeting at noon this Friday, at the Palace of the Revolution, with Renzo Manyari Velazco, president of the Peruvian Olympic Committee, and Carlos Zegarra Presser, president of the Pan-American Judo Confederation, with whom he shared experiences of the development of sport in Cuba.
Brotherhood, solidarity, sport and science were some of the most common words in the conversation that the President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, held at noon this Friday, with Renzo Manyari Velazco, president of the Peruvian Olympic Committee, and Carlos Zegarra Presser, president of the Pan American Judo Confederation, who are making a working visit to Cuba.
It is a pleasure to welcome you from a sister Latin American country, and also as representatives of the Peruvian Olympic Committee and the Pan American Judo Federation, said the Head of State upon welcoming them at the Palace of the Revolution.
“How have things been going for you here?” Díaz-Canel wanted to know. Faced with the question, Manyari Velazco assured that “very well”, because it has been “an experience that has allowed me to deepen the brotherhood and solidarity that has united us for quite some time.”
He also commented on his recent visit to the Fidel Castro Center, where there are phrases, he said, that deeply impacted him, due to the way in which sports and the construction of a nation are understood. “Allow me to thank you for the opportunity to embrace such moving ideas, but above all ideas that revolutionize the soul and allow us to think towards the future based on a fraternity”, he meant.
In sports terms, he assured that the experiences shared since his arrival on the island last Wednesday have allowed them to better understand the functioning of the Cuban sports system.
The way in which sport is embraced and how it is understood here, he asserted, has enabled us to reformulate two great premises: the principle that sport is an end in itself, paraphrasing Fidel, and on the other hand, understanding the needs so great that Peruvian sport has.
“We have been amazed by the Cuban Sports Research Center, which is something that we want to have as the main start-up project, to start our work,” Manyari Velazco appreciated during the meeting, in which Osvaldo Vento Montiller, president of the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER), and Roberto León Richards Aguiar, president of the Cuban Olympic Committee.
In an exchange marked by cordiality and mutual sympathy, Carlos Zegarra Presser, president of the Pan American Judo Confederation, shared with the Head of State the honor that represented having received the Seventh Dan during this visit to the Greater Antilles. Likewise, he recalled his fight against Cuban judoka Óscar Bryson, at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
About Cuba’s experiences in the use of science and innovation, also in the sports field, President Díaz-Canel commented extensively to the visitors, to whom he expressed his willingness to share the knowledge that we have accumulated in the country.
