A top Cuban hurdler who defected earlier this month says he now wants to be reunited with his mother in Florida.<\/p>\n
Orlando Ortega, 22, criticised the Cuban sports authorities in a phone call to the Associated Press news agency from Padua in Italy.<\/p>\n
“It was an extremely difficult and tough decision, but I made it and I won’t look back,” said Ortega.<\/p>\n
Ortega came sixth in the 110m hurdles final in the London 2012 Olympics. But this year his form has been much worse.<\/p>\n
He failed to get beyond the qualifying round in his event at the world championships in Moscow recently.<\/p>\n
The Cuban authorities suspended him for six months for insubordination after he refused to compete in a June trial event in Russia.<\/p>\n
In early August he abandoned the Cuban team in Spain, after the World Championships in Moscow.<\/p>\n
He was regarded as one of the island’s top athletes and his defection is seen as a big blow, coming after the decision by fellow Cuban hurdler Dayron Robles to move his career to Monaco.<\/p>\n
“Right now the only thing and what I want most is to reunite with my mother in the United States,” Ortega said. His mother lives in Tampa, Florida.<\/p>\n
“They committed a great injustice with me and my trainer,” Ortega said. “It affected me a lot and I felt very bad, because I didn’t compete during the two months ahead of the world championships,” he told AP.<\/p>\n
“I am living some hard moments. I know that in Cuba people are talking about betrayal,” Ortega said.<\/p>\n
He went on to criticise Cuba’s sports authorities for “the lack .<\/p>\n
BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A top Cuban hurdler who defected earlier this month says he now wants to be reunited with his mother in Florida. Orlando Ortega, 22, criticised the Cuban sports authorities in a phone call to the Associated Press news agency from Padua in Italy. “It was an extremely difficult and tough decision, but I made it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2000047895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-10018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000047895,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10018.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10018.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10018.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10018.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10018.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10018.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000047895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10018"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=10018"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=10018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}