Leuris Pupo and the hope of the Cuban shooting team

Cuban shooting has five Olympic medals in its showcases. Two of them bear the name of Holguin pistol player Leuris Pupo Requejo.

A specialist in 25-meter rapid fire pistol, he won his first medal under the five rings in London 2012, where he became the only Cuban who has climbed to the top of the podium in those competitions.

Until then, there were three bronze medals: Roberto Castrillo in Moscow 1980, Juan Miguel Rodríguez in Athens 2004 and Eglis de la Cruz in Beijing 2008.

The Holguin native’s feat in the Olympic Games grew in Tokyo 2020, when he won the silver medal, consolidating his position as the best shooter of all time on the island.

The road to what will be his seventh straight games began when he qualified directly at the XIII Pan American Championship of Lima 2022, in Peru, being the number one among the exponents of his country with quotas for the Parisian event.

After winning the title in the continental multisport competition, held in Santiago de Chile at the end of last year, he stepped on several competitive stages, almost all of them at a high level.

The World Cup in Cairo, Egypt, the Americas championship hosted by Buenos Aires, and the final of the Olympic qualifying tournament of the International Shooting Sport Federation, based in Rio de Janeiro, were among the most important.

Then there were the world cups in Baku, Azerbaijan, and Munich, Germany.

On Egyptian soil, Pupo came within one point of advancing to the final battle, but in the competition held in the Gaucho territory he showed his sporting mastery to win the golden metal.

He later took fourth place among six finalists in the Brazilian event, and a couple of discreet performances in the Azeri capital and the German city, with scores of 571 and 573 points, respectively.

His title in the tournament in Argentina opened the doors to Olympic qualification for his teammate, Jorge Felix Alvarez, who so far this year has had excellent results in the international arena.

In that event, pistol shooter Laina Pérez and rifle shooter Lisbet Hernández also made it to Paris, a merit for this sport.

The quartet of shooters from the island will attend the competition in the City of Light with the aim of entering the finals. According to the specialists’ criteria, the Holguin-born shooter will have to maintain a score of 585 units in the qualifying rounds to aspire to medals.

In the rapid fire pistol, both Pupo and Jorge Felix will face a demanding competition, as they will compete against men of proven quality such as the American Keith Sanderson -several times world medalist-, the Czech Martin Podhrasky or the French Clement Bessaguet and Jean Quiquampoix, the latter Olympic champion in Japan.

Chinese athlete Yuehong Li and Xinjie Wang, German shooters Oliver Geis and Florian Peter, as well as Matej Rampula, from the Czech Republic, and Kazakh Nikita Chiriukin, will also be contenders to watch out for.

The experienced Cuban has said on several occasions that, in Paris, he hopes to make a good score in the qualifying stage and then in the final, when everything starts from scratch, to fight to be a medalist.

It will not be easy for him, nor for his teammates, but in the Cuban shooting there is confidence, and in Pupo’s expertise lie our main hopes.

With information by Lianet Escobar Hernández  – jit.cu / Translated by Radio Angulo