POSTED: Wednesday August 25th 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A CUBAN AND AN AMERICAN MAKE PEACE THROUGH THE MODERN PENTATHLON MIXED RELAY

Two teenagers, both 18 years old, one American, the other Cuban. In the mixed relay event that wrapped up the modern pentathlon competition at these first-ever Youth Olympic Games, Cuban Leydi Laura Moya Lopez and American Na

Fate threw them together. Together they made sports history.
They bridged 90 miles, 50 years and a raft of political complexities, two teenagers, both 18 years old, one American, the other Cuban.
In the mixed relay event that wrapped up the modern pentathlon competition at these first-ever Youth Olympic Games, Cuban Leydi Laura Moya Lopez and American Nathan Schrimsher competed together as a team. Two nations, one entry on the start sheet.
After a long day of fencing, swimming, running and shooting, they finished 16th of 24.
No one cared.

Just competing together was all that mattered—their appearance, according to current and former senior U.S. Olympic Committee staff, believed to be the first time an American and Cuban had paired up as sports buddies in an Olympic-style event in decades.

“It was normal,” she said. “In competition, all is beautiful.”
He said, “She doesn’t speak much if any English. I don’t speak any Spanish. But we got along really well; we were high-fiving, giving each other hugs, encouraging each other. We both do pentathlon so we both speak pentathlon and understand each other—our pains and groans and aches. So we were able to help each other.”

Over the years that Fidel Castro has been in charge on the island nation, Cubans and Americans have of course competed against each other many, many times at untold number of events.  And some Cuban athletes—think Major League Baseball—have made it to the States to compete with Americans in professional sports.

But an American and a Cuban together, as teammates, on the Olympic scene—that was believed to be a first.

It made for a study in the very essence of sport—and a reminder that while sport hardly offers a direct path to world peace there are moments when sport can offer a dialogue and a path that virtually nothing else can.

The pairing in pentathlon, as it would turn out, came on the very same day that a Saudi Arabian girl, Dalma Rushdi H Malhas, the first Saudi female ever to compete at an Olympic event, won bronze in the individual equestrian event.

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, on hand at the Singapore Sports School to watch the swim portion of the pentathlon, said, “Sure, sport is an instrument of change.”
He cautioned, “We should not overload sport with potential that it does not have. Sport alone will not bring peace. Sport alone will not keep peace. It can contribute to other efforts—by politicians, by public opinion, by non-governmental organizations—to create a peaceful planet. We are participating in that effort.”

These first-ever Youth Games now seem destined to be remembered for such sentiments, in part because the IOC and the international sports federations gambled on experiments such as mixed relays.

Gilbert Felli, the senior IOC official who oversees the delivery of Olympic events, said in an interview with the Young Reporters program—another Youth Games initiative, with more than two dozen aspiring journalists from around the world—that the mixing and matching was highly unlikely to make its way into the traditional Summer Games program.

For one, he suggested, such mixed events can help the Youth Games achieve its own identity.

For another, he said, the competitive and commercial pressures of chasing a medal at the traditional Games are all but sure to prove far too intense to allow for such experimentation at the Summer Olympics.
“We have to look at the Youth Olympics as a special event,” he said. “It is not a mini-Olympics.”

The pentathlon competition Tuesday took USA-Cuba one step further—to a genuine partnership.

Nathan, who is from Roswell, N.M., was thrown together with Leydi by chance; their names were picked out of a glass bowl in a draw made Sunday evening.
Because she had won the individual gold, some had thought before the mixed event Tuesday that they might be medal contenders.

But no—as she would acknowledged later, she was so tired from winning the individual event that she didn’t have much left.

“The competition was good,” she said. “Sports are sports. If I had to compete with the United States, I was happy about it.”

He said, “Competing with Cuba was amazing. I don’t know all the politics and everything. I know there’s a lot of tension. Competing with her—there wasn’t any problem. We’re just pentathletes. We’re people, too. We enjoy what we do and had a blast doing it.”

Peace and Sport President and UIPM Secretary General Joël Bouzou stated: “Through the YOG, its pragmatic mix of cultures, social and religion differences, with its media coverage all over the world, the IOC has maybe created a space for Peace through Sport which will be seen as such 10 years from now. I am honoured to be part of it, not only as UIPM Secretary General but also as the President of Peace and Sport and as an Olympian”

# # #

---

Keywords · Modern Pentathlon · Cuba · America · UIPM · Youth Olympic Games · Singapore · Mixed Relay

---

Name: Matt Pound
Organization: Union Internationale De Pentathlon Moderne - UIPM
Email:
Phone: +377 9777 8555
URL: http://www.pentathlon.org

---

Please refer all questions to the company listed above issuing the press release. SFC will not be able to assist you with any inquiries and disclaims any content in these press releases.