Cuba’s Diaz Caemenate Yoandry
The 2010 World Championship silver medalists are now seeking the last chance to be in London Olympic Games after losing the Continental Qualifications to USA at their homelands. Cuba missed two successive Olympic Games in Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 and now they are looking forwards for their seventh Olympic berth in their history after 1972, 1976, 1980, 1992, 1996 and 2000.
Veteran coach Samuels Orlando said that the situation is not easy in presence of experienced team like Germany and Czech Republic but his team is ready to challenge.
“We had a problem of lack of proper preparations due to the shortage of indoor halls now in Cuba that cost us to schedule our home World League matches in Dominican Republic. We prepared through the first weekend of the World League in the tough pool A where we took over Japan 3-0 and the defending champions Russia 3-2 and lost against Serbia 1-3,”
“One of our main problems in the last few years is departure of most of our brilliant players and they aren’t available any more for the national team and thus we had to build up a new team like now where we have good players but lack the experience.”
Cuba depends now on some of the experienced stars like captain and wing spiker Wilfredo Leon, libero Keibel Gutierrez and setter Yoandry Diaz.
The North American giants have many successes during the last few years, the best was the 2010 World Championship silver medal in Italy and the same medal in the 2009 Grand champions Cup as well as finishing fourth twice in the 2009 and 2010 World league editions.
They will start meeting Czech Republic on Friday May 8 before they battle against the hosts Germany on Saturday and they finish the tournament meeting India on Sunday.
