Just a few days ago, with some work, I spoke with Estela Rodríguez. Her phone rang and rang insistently and there was no answer, until finally that jovial and peculiar voice of Estela came to life on the other side of the line. It was a quick call—perhaps a minute and a half—because the first Cuban judo world champion had to attend to some medical emergencies. However, in that time she managed to coordinate an interview in the coming weeks.
I met Estela personally at the beginning of February of this year, when we coincided in the presentation of the book heart medalsa work by colleague Joel García that collects 50 testimonies from various Cuban sports stars, including the once stellar queen of the tatamis, between the late 1980s and the 1990s.
That day, I remember, I asked her for her phone number in the middle of a crowd that didn’t want to go home without taking a picture with her. Estela, imposing from her two meters tall, enjoyed being the center of attention and responded to everyone with pleasure, while showing off her half blue, half red shirt, with the respective Industriales and Santiago de Cuba baseball logos on each side of her chest. When I saw her with that jacket, I intuited that in terms of balls and strikes It was difficult for him to lean towards the indomitable side or the one from the capital, eternally found in the diamonds of the Island.
Precisely, that was one of the questions that I had prepared for her: “Industrialist or from Santiago?”, I would say to get the colors out of her and put her in trouble. But, unfortunately, the interview with the first Cuban woman to win a medal on the Olympic mats has not been possible. This Sunday, April 10, Estela Rodríguez died suddenly due to heart failure and she turned off our smile.
The woman from Santiago, born on November 12, 1967, was all love and joy, which is why her departure has been a tremendous blow to the sports movement, her fans and several of her main stars. For example, one of the spectacular “Morenas del Caribe”, Mireya Luis, expressed on social networks that the death of a star hurt her soul. “We will miss you,” said one of the three-time Olympic champions of Cuban volleyball.
Another judo star on the Island, Dayma Beltrán, also left a heartfelt farewell message to her former rival, partner and friend. “A lot of light for your soul, eternal gratitude for the time shared, for being a respected rival and that made me strive every day to be better,” said the Sydney and Athens Olympic runner-up.
Dayma coincided with Estela in the national team for several years, an experience that was very beneficial for both of them. “In the times that we trained together, we helped each other in everything. We traveled many times to the same competitions and she competed in one division and I in another. Her help was positive for me and I think that modestly I also contributed a lot to her career, because having a high-level opponent in your own country makes you a better judoka, ”Rodríguez said in the testimonies collected in heart medals.
Now, after the irreparable loss of Estela, Dayma affirmed that, thanks to her, thanks to having her as a partner, she was able to gain the necessary confidence to face any judoka without thinking about how much she weighed or the titles she had.
“I will always remember you with gratitude and happiness, because I know that you prefer it that way. Always a laugh or a story, so many stories lived between sweat and daily effort, so many laughs and tears in all those years in Cerro Pelado. We are not prepared for losses, but today, after many sessions to accept it, I know, although it hurts, that it is the most natural thing. Fly high black and continue taking care of your loved ones from the sky. Light for your soul”, Dayma Beltrán wrote in an exciting message.
Her words make clear to us the type of person Estela Rodríguez was, her height as a professional and as a human being. In particular, it hurts me not to have been able to sit down and talk with Estela at length, discover and tell her innumerable stories that are, on her own merits, in a sacred place in Cuban sports.
But we do not want to deprive ourselves of their testimonies, we do not want Estela’s voice to be extinguished, which is why we take some excerpts from her interview with colleague Joel García, where she reviews her resistance to competing in judo and her subsequent effort to sneak into the elite , as well as the satisfactions that being a champion gave her.
A life lesson
“Never (I had entered a tatami), but I signed up and I didn’t go. She was only interested in having a group to receive the classes. One day the coach went to look for me at home, back in Palma Soriano, due to my repeated absences from judo. It’s a shame, my dad forced me to pick up my things and leave for school at that time. My mom was more understanding and she said that she wouldn’t force me to play that sport if she didn’t want to. That afternoon I entered a judo mat for the first time.”
The first day on the tatami
“That day I had rollers on and the first thing that Professor Roberto Lewis did was give me a crash so that I would learn that judo did not go with rollers. I started going frequently, but I still didn’t like it. One day, in training, I broke the coach’s arm and he, instead of feeling bad, was very happy because he said that now he was going to be world champion. I felt very sorry for him, because he came to call me ‘my daughter’ and the least I thought and wanted was to do that to him during a preparation day.”
The first Cuban world champion
“In 1989 I did my first European tour and got some medals. When we arrived at the World Cup in Belgrade, the teacher (Ronaldo Veitía) only told me that I had to be more mature to aspire to a great result. First I was fifth in more than 72 kilograms and then in the free division I won gold. I thought of many people, my children, Robert Lewis (his childhood coach), my family, Cuba. I keep that medal with special affection because it was the first and because it was the only one enjoyed by my mother, who died in 1990, when my great harvest of awards began, of more than one hundred medals.”
Ronaldo Veitía: “Making history is not easy”
olympic glory
“Training was very hard for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. I had a name in this sport and I exceeded the forecast, because I ended up with silver. Physical preparation was fundamental, although I never liked running on the track, I preferred to train doing judo.
“For the 1996 Atlanta Games, the situation was similar, with the difference that I already had more experience and the challenge of equaling or surpassing the previous performance. And I was able to overcome it, because I had beaten the Chinese woman with whom I discussed the gold a year before. That defeat, together with the 1991 World Cup with a Polish, with four seconds to go, are the bitterest memories of my career.
The return to the tatami
“I had walked away from the national preselection in the late nineties because I was tired. When I decided to return in 2001, the goal was to give the best of Estela in a new stage, without having any prerogative for my previous merits. I had to earn the right to go to the World Championships in Munich like any other athlete on the team, but running out of medals confirmed that I couldn’t fight against time. I consulted with Prof. Veitía and finally asked for my retirement.”
I thought I was forgotten, but…
“(…) a few weeks ago after television put on a video with some of my fights, a child asked me on the street: ‘Are you the judoka who appeared on television yesterday?’ And that expression came to me here, to my heart, because I thought I had been forgotten…”
