When the years go by and these Olympic Games are nothing more than sports history, the judoka Kaliema Antomarchi will not have a medal to show her loved ones, but all those who saw her fight in Tokyo will remember her with singular affection.
She herself will always evoke her fifth place in Japan among the best of her career.
She had to exert herself to the maximum, almost to exhaustion, in lawsuits with opponents of the highest level, including the world champion and the first in the ranking.
However, she was always ready to fight, confident, fearless, never doubting her chances of succeeding or showing signs of distress.
That is why it is so hard not to have seen her on the podium with her medal on her chest, a medal for which she fought as a lioness. As she fell in the fight for bronze, her eyes became wet, but immediately they blazed with joy, convinced that she had given everything for the victory.
His name does not appear among the 15 athletes who in the end contributed medals to the Cuban delegation in the multisport event; Nobody, however, will be able to ignore the fifth place of this Santiago, who, even without a medal, touched the Olympic glory.
