Three Cuban Judo Medalists Defect After Florida Tournament

Three members of Cuba’s national judo team — Lianet Cardona, Dayanara Curbelo and Jonathan Charón — left the delegation that competed at the Pan American Open in Florida after all three reached the podium, 14ymedio reported. The departures came within hours of state media celebrating the “joys” and “hopes” the sport had delivered for the island over the weekend.

Alain Fernández, Cuban judo coach in the United States, disclosed on Tuesday that Cardona and Curbelo had abandoned the delegation, and Cubalite reported on Wednesday that Charón had joined them. All three left after concluding their participation in the tournament, according to a source close to the national judo team cited by the outlet.

Silver, silver and gold in Florida

The three athletes were not bit players. Curbelo, in the over-78-kilogram division, took silver after defeating Poland’s Urszula Hofman and the Dominican Republic’s Moira Morillo before losing the final to Venezuela’s Karen León. Cardona, at 78 kg, also won silver, beating American Lydia Coleman and falling to Venezuela’s Elvismar Rodríguez in the championship bout. Charón captured gold at 60 kg by defeating Brazil’s Michel Augusto in the final.

The defections remove three of the country’s leading figures in their weight classes at a moment when Cuban officials had counted on them for results across upcoming tournaments. All three had been slated to compete at this coming weekend’s Pan American Open in Montreal.

Young medalists with stacked résumés

Curbelo, 21, is from the municipality of Artemisa. She served as Cuba’s flag bearer at the 2025 Junior Pan American Games in Asunción, where she won the country’s only gold in judo, and this year added bronze medals at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Santo Domingo and at the senior continental championship in Panama City.

Cardona, 22, of Santiago de Cuba, also took bronze in Santo Domingo, and her record includes bronze medals at the Pan American and Oceania Championship in Rio de Janeiro in 2024 and in Santiago, Chile, in 2025.

Charón, 22, was born in Guantánamo and has stood on the podium at the Pan American Judo Championships for four consecutive years: bronze in Calgary in 2023 and Rio de Janeiro in 2024, silver in Santiago in 2025 and gold in Panama City in 2026. Those continental results sit alongside titles at the Santo Domingo Central American and Caribbean Games and the Florida Pan American Open, plus a bronze at the 2025 Tbilisi Grand Slam.

A coach asks how long the losses will continue

Fernández questioned the toll the departures take on a system that invests years in developing its athletes, asking how long Cuba will keep losing competitors that cost so much effort and sacrifice to form. He pointed to the island’s difficult economic, political and social situation, along with scarce resources, limited international competition and few professional opportunities, as the forces still weighing on Cuban sport.

A defection that follows an Olympic medalist

The judo departures came barely a day after the defection of Cuban wrestler Yusneylis Guzmán López, the Olympic silver medalist in women’s 50 kg freestyle at the Paris 2024 Games. Guzmán López left the national delegation during a stopover in Mexico on Monday while the team was traveling to Brazil. The 30-year-old from Havana became the first Cuban woman to win an Olympic medal in wrestling and was Cuba’s top female athlete of that year.

More than a thousand athletes since 2013

According to Cuba’s own sports authorities, the defection of athletes has surpassed 1,000 since 2013. The drain has shown up directly in international results. At Paris 2024, Cuban-born athletes won 18 medals in total, but only nine belonged to the official delegation, which sent 61 competitors across 16 disciplines: gold in Greco-Roman wrestling and boxing, silver in freestyle wrestling, and bronze in Greco-Roman wrestling, freestyle wrestling (twice), boxing, canoeing and taekwondo. The other nine — one gold, four silver and four bronze — were won by 21 exiled Cuban athletes competing for other countries, a far higher medal rate than the official delegation managed. That nine-medal haul was Cuba’s worst at an Olympics in 52 years.

The three judokas were contemplated to compete this coming weekend at the Pan American Open in Montreal.