Cuba’s Leonel Suarez 2nd in Decathlon

HAVANA TIMES, Aug. 21 – Leonel Suarez was the bright spot Thursday for Cuba at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin on a day that Cuban world record holder Dayron Robles (110-meters) was unable to get past the semi-finals pulling up part way through the race with an injured hamstring.

Suarez, 21, managed a spectacular second place finish in the decathlon, to many the most demanding of events.  The Cuban had won a bronze medal in the same event at the 2008 Bejing Olympics. The decathlon champ in Berlin was US athlete Trey Hardee with 8,790 points to Suarez 8,640.  Russian Aleksandr Pogorelov was third with 8,528.

Cuba now has one gold, two silver and one bronze medal and is in eighth place overall behind the leader Jamaica (5-2-2), the US second with (4-4-5) and Russia (2-2-5).