Leyanis Pérez to Lead Cuba at the World Indoor Championships in Torun

A delegation of six athletes, led by reigning champion Leyanis Pérez, will compete at the World Indoor Athletics Championships, scheduled for March 20–22 in the Polish city of Toruń.
Pérez will seek to replicate the title she claimed last year in Nanjing. On that occasion, her teammate Liadagmis Povea claimed the silver medal. Both athletes will attempt to repeat that achievement, though this time they will face Yulimar Rojas as a competitor — a matchup that promises to be one of the premier showdowns of the event.
Also set to compete at Arena Toruń are triple jumpers Lázaro Martínez and Andy Hechavarría, short hurdles specialist Greysi Robles, and long jumper Jorge Hodelín. With this roster, Cuba surpasses its three-athlete contingent from 2025, when Liadagmis, Lázaro, and Leyanis represented the island nation.
In a conversation with Rolando Charró, the national commissioner for the sport, he confirmed that Cuba's medal prospects rest primarily on Pérez maintaining her place on the podium and on the Guantánamo-born triple jumper — the 2022 world champion in the same discipline — while significant expectations also surround Hodelín, who made his international debut last year and is regarded as an emerging talent.
Regarding the sport's broader strategic roadmap, Charró noted that the top priority remains participation in the Central American and Caribbean Games, with this world championship serving as the opening stage of preparation for Santo Domingo.
As for sprinter Roxana Gómez, one of Cuba's most prominent track-and-field figures, he clarified that she will not compete in Toruń, as her schedule is oriented directly toward the Central American and Caribbean Games. Meanwhile, high jumpers Luis Enrique Zayas and Dacsy Brisón did not achieve the qualifying standard.
Cuba, which has not missed a single edition of the global competition since its inaugural staging in 1987, arrives in Poland with a date with history. A total of 19 gold medals place the country sixth in the all-time medal table, trailing only the United States (125), Russia (70), Ethiopia (34), Germany (24), and Great Britain (22). Portland in 2016 remains the only edition in which Cuba's delegation finished without a single medal.
The first Cuban to claim a world indoor title was Javier Sotomayor in 1989, in Budapest, where he set the world record of 2.43 meters in the high jump — a mark that still stands to this day. Long jumper Iván Pedroso, for his part, holds the record of five world indoor titles, all achieved consecutively.
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