"My dream is to become an Olympian,”says Holguín rower Ana Laura Jiménez
- Written by Calixto González Betancourt
- Published in Sports
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We already knew about the progression of the young rower Ana Laura Jiménez, but her three medals at the San Salvador-2023 Central American and Caribbean Games brought her to the forefront of the sport.
The 20 years old young girl, native from Mayarí, agreed to talk to the local newspaper ¡ahora!, despite the little time available, as she was preparing to travel to Russia, where she will participate in a competition with a stage in Vladisvostok.
“I started in Remos thanks to a neighbor who took me to the academy of that sport in Nipe, the place where I live, which made it easy to go with her to watch and I started to like it,” is how Ana Jiménez recalled her start in that discipline.
“I was national champion (School Games) in seventh and eighth grades, in the singles; I only competed in that event in these two years. In ninth grade I achieved silver in the single and the same medal in the four pair of short oars.
In tenth I repeated the same result in the single and we took silver in the eight pair of short paddles. In the last Central American and Caribbean Games I became a multi-medallist with gold in the four pair, open weight and two silvers, in single and double pair of light weight.” That is the brief, but already fruitful competitive career of Ana Laura.
“I am currently classified in the single, lightweight, open weight four and mixed eight for the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, next October, where I aspire to achieve a medal,” she added.
Jiménez is currently the best light weight rower (up to 64 kilos) in Cuba. However, her time in rowing has not been a bed of roses: When she was in tenth grade she was declared an api (immediate perspective athlete), but then the national specialists removed that condition from her, alleging that she had not reached the height enough to be in the first level.
At the insistence of the Holguín coaches and her continued good competitive results, they called her api again in 2019. A year later she reached the country's Pre-selection, where she defeated all her colleagues, according to Rafael Teruel, former provincial commissioner of rowing.
“I am already in my second year of studying psychology, which, along with rowing, occupies almost all my time. My dream is to become an Olympian, and successfully finish my university studies,” Jimenez concluded.
