Mijaín Lopez: The Cuban hero of the Paris Olympics who loves Fidel Castro

By Nikos Mottas

The hero of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games isn't Tom Cruise, Armand Duplantis or Novak Djokovic. The hero is Cuban and his name is Mijaín Lopez.  

The son of Leonor and Bartolo, went beyond all possible limits. If any human work comes close to perfection, it is the one he has just closed here, with his fifth consecutive gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling. Wrestling has remained, with Mijaín, in the golden paradise of the five rings since 1992, when Héctor Milián won the gold medal in Barcelona. Since then, he has never failed to reach the top of the podium in any edition.

Normally, all news networks, TV, newspapers and sites should dedicate their pages for him. That would probably happen if Mijaín wasn't Cuban but an athlete from a western country, from Europe or the United States. Perhaps the mainstream media would talk much more about him if he was a “dissident”, if he had left Cuba for Miami denouncing its socialist government. In such case, he would have been viral.

But  on the contrary, Mijaín is a proud representative of socialist Cuba. And, moreover, he loves Fidel Castro, to whom he had dedicated his 1st and 3rd gold medals. In his home, Lopez has hanged his medals next to a portrait of the historic leader of the Cuban revolution.

Because, as Granma wrote, Mijaín is Cuba. Because the child, the young man, the worker, the scientist, the doctor, the teacher, the intellectual, are reflected in his conviction of victory. Long live  Mijaín, Long live socialist Cuba!

* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.