Regime demands the expulsion of canoeist Fernando Dayán from the Refugee Olympic Team

MIAMI, United States. – The Cuban Olympic Committee (COC) has asked the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to “immediately expel” Cuban canoeist Fernando Dayán Jorge from the Refugee Olympic Team (ROT) that will participate in the Paris 2024 Olympics, alleging political motives and violations of the Olympic Charter.

Dayán Jorge was accepted into the EOR in May 2024, a decision that the COC described on Tuesday as “unjustified” and which, according to the Cuban official, was taken with the intention of “attacking the image of the national sports movement” on the Island.

In its statement, the COC expressed its discontent from the beginning and assured that it had maintained communication with the IOC to resolve the situation. “We have clearly informed the IOC that the COC supports the idea with which the EOR was originally conceived in 2015,” the statement said. According to the statement, the COC has “nothing against Cuban athletes” or “against many other Cuban athletes and coaches who live or develop their sports careers in other countries.”

Despite these statements of general support, the COC took an extreme stance against Fernando Dayán Jorge, Olympic champion in Tokyo 2020, who according to the statement has made “disrespectful and fallacious political statements against his country, his people and the sports movement that allowed him to become an Olympic champion.”

The COC believes that these statements confirm its concerns about the “true political motivation for the inclusion of athletes of Cuban origin in the EOR.”

“Given this reality, and taking into account that the IOC has not commented on our most recent message in this regard, the COC feels obliged to publicly report this situation and demand the immediate expulsion of the aforementioned athlete from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games,” the statement said.

In April of this year, the Olympic Refuge Foundation (ORF) announced the addition of five new athletes to its scholarship program, including Fernando Dayán Jorge.

The Cuban Olympic champion, a native of the province of Cienfuegos, was crowned Olympic champion in the C2 1000 event in Tokyo 2020, which represented the first gold for Cuban canoeing at the Olympics.

She also won four silver medals and two bronze medals in the C2 1000 and C1 5000 events at world competitions, as well as one gold and one silver at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru in 2019.

In March 2022, he escaped from the delegation with which he traveled to Mexico for training. From Mexico, he embarked on a journey to reach the United States that included crossing the Rio Grande. He currently resides in Florida.