Leaving Cuba to Pursue a Dream in United States

Leaving Cuba to Pursue a Dream in United States
By JESSICA WEISS
Published: June 4, 2012

Manuel Huerta was 6 and living in Havana when he first dreamed of being
an Olympian, after practicing alongside the Cuban national swim team six
blocks from his home.

Now, the 28-year-old Huerta, who goes by Manny, is headed to London for
his first Olympic appearance, as part of the United States triathlon
team. He qualified at the trials May 12 in San Diego, clinching the
second of two men's spots on the team.

Huerta, who defected in 1997 at age 13, says his Olympic journey serves
as a "message to the Castro government."

"I'm one of the Cubans that Fidel calls the Miami Mafia," he said, in
reference to the Miami exile community that the Cuban state-run news
media often portray as malicious and anti-Cuban.

"But I am not a bad person. I'm obviously not invading anyone in Cuba.
Actually, I'm going to the Olympics."

Cuba has a strong Olympic tradition, and will send athletes to London in
events including table tennis, boxing and track and field. But Huerta
said he probably would have been unable to pursue his athletic ambitions
in Cuba because of his family's political history.

In 1980, his grandmother Consuelo left Cuba as part of the Mariel
boatlift, when the Castro government allowed Cubans to board boats at
the port of Mariel, west of Havana, to come to the United States.

The mass emigration occurred after five Cubans drove a bus through the
gates of the Peruvian Embassy and were granted political asylum. When
the Peruvian ambassador refused to return the citizens to the
authorities, Castro removed the Cuban guards from the embassy,
effectively releasing the thousands of asylum seekers who had gathered
there. He called those who chose to leave "scum."

"Even if I became the same caliber of athlete in Cuba as I am now,
Castro would never have let me leave the island to represent Cuba, "
Huerta said. "Because of my family, we were marked."

Huerta, who is 5 feet 7 inches, was a small child, but he loved
athletics. He woke before 5 a.m. to swim at Havana's Marcelo Salado
pool, named after an early revolutionary martyr. When he was 8, Huerta
watched Cuban athletes compete in 16 sports in the 1992 Barcelona Games,
broadcast on Cuba's state-run television. (Cuba boycotted the 1984 and
1988 Games.) At 13, he placed first at the Cuban IronKids national
championship, his first triathlon.

In November 1997, after months of paperwork, Huerta left Havana by plane
with his mother and sister, to join his grandmother in Miami. He grew up
"living and training on the streets of Little Havana," a Miami neighborhood.

"The language was the same, the food, the culture," he said. "What was
different was the freedom to talk about anything we wanted without being
afraid of getting in trouble."

He loved the Yankees, and would often call his father, who lived in
Colombia, to talk baseball. Huerta fell in love with triathlon at 15 and
joined a local triathlon club, where he flourished.

"He was always determined to be the fastest," said Frank Sanchez, 39,
who met Huerta around that time. "But he didn't have the money, so we
all took him under our wing and helped him — donating bike parts, and
sponsor deals, and all that stuff. We saw he was good."

Huerta ran cross-country in high school and landed a scholarship to
Florida Atlantic. In 2003 he was invited to train for the triathlon at
the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. When he
was 20, he became an American citizen. In 2011, he was a Pan American
Games silver medalist.

"Manny has so much drive, incredible body awareness, and is an amazing
competitor," said Roberto Solano, his coach, who is training Huerta in
Costa Rica, on the side of an active volcano, until London. "But this
has not been an easy journey for him."

In recent years, Huerta was slowed by injuries and had trouble finding
money to support his race calendar. In 2009, his father died of colon
cancer. His mother has skin cancer. Solano said Huerta was close to
giving up several times.

"But he really wanted it," Solano said. "In San Diego, Manny executed
perfectly and truly had the race of his life."

After coming from the fourth pack in the swim (1,500 meters), Huerta
made up time in the bike portion (40 kilometers), then recorded a split
of 30 minutes 44 seconds in the 10-kilometer run.

When Huerta arrived at the Miami airport from San Diego, his mother and
a small group of friends were there to greet him and his girlfriend,
Pierina, who is from Argentina and also a triathlete, holding up signs
that read, "U.S.A." They were the same people who supported Huerta since
the beginning, when he was just a child in Little Havana with a big dream.

"I came to the U.S., and it opened its door and gave me all the support
I needed," Huerta said. "Now I'm going to go to London and represent it."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/sports/olympics/us-triathlete-huerta-left-cuba-to-pursue-olympic-dream.html