Yanelis: "It's never too late to be a World Cup player"
- Written by Calixto González Betancourt
- Published in Sports
- Hits: 1410
Table tennis player Yanelis Silva Zamora, the best disabled athlete from Holguín of all time, has just received a ticket for her World Championship, after many years of struggling competitively with excellent results, in a class 3 wheelchair.
"I am very happy to be able to attend the World Championship, in Granada, Spain, from November 6 to 12," Silva said.
“My three medals in the Tango Cup, last July in Argentina, where I won gold in women's double, individual silver and bronze in mixed double, made me eligible for the World Championship, whose ticket Cuba requested and was granted, she explained.
“It is an opportunity that I longed for, because it is the only major international event that I have yet to attend, after more than two decades, when in 2001 my presence in a World Cup was not possible due to difficulties with the visa,” she recalled.
Despite her continued high performance, the world championships had been elusive: “They required more than six international participations in the year to access that Championship, which we Cubans could not meet. For example, in 2012 I competed in the Paralympics and I was the best in America, and it wasn't enough; luckily that changed
Silva Zamora was eighth in the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece-2004 and sixth in Beijing, China, in 2008, champion and multi-medallist in the Para-American tournaments and the best of Cuba in her specialty for a long time.
“Now we will make the necessary corrections in preparation to be ready for the World Cup. It is a commitment that will take all my strength and commitment and I will fulfill thinking big. It's never too late to be a World Cup player”, concluded Yanelis Silva.
