Spanish Olympic boxing at the Games has been small and few. No Olympic champions and historic low weights, Rodriguez Cal, in Munich 72, or Rafa Lozano Balita, podium in Atlanta 96 and Sydney 2000. But Paris arrives, with Balita himself, as technical director of the federation, and his work plan takes, as never seen before, four Spaniards to the quarterfinals at the Games, among them his son, Rafa Lozano jr. And leading the team, the overwhelming personality of Emmanuel Reyes Pla, The profitwho while winning neither changes his socks nor washes his underwear so that they do not lose the essence that transforms him, and won his quarterfinal fight unanimously (5-0) against the Belgian Victor Schelstraete. Whatever happens in the semifinals (Sunday 4) against Loren Berto Alfonso (29), Cuban, also from Havana, who represents Azerbaijan, Reyes has already secured a medal. He weighs 92 kilos, heavyweight, a historic novelty for flyweight boxing.
“And we also have a free weight fighter (+92 kg), Ayoub Ghadfa, who will box on Friday in the quarterfinals,” says Lozano, a trainer of few words and a lot of calm, one who neither gets excited nor creates drama. “I get emotional, of course, but it is hard for me to express my feelings.” And he will never let go of the cliché that we are making history. He prefers to analyze the Prophet’s fight in the quarterfinals. “Very intense, very well conducted. The first round 5-0. Complete dominance. The other, more punches, but less effective. The second, 3-2, nervous. The third, 5-0. I was waiting for him to counterattack, which is what hurts the most. With straight punches, or hooks, I hunted him down. A lot of intensity. But he always dominated,” explains the coach and two-time medalist. “He has more confidence, experience, veteran status.”
The victory in the quarterfinals was the fight of redemption for the Prophet, born in Havana 31 years ago, who in his first Games as a Spaniard, in Tokyo 2020, was defeated in the same phase by his former compatriot Julio César la Cruz, The shadow,after a verdict that he never accepted because he considered it unfair. It was more than just three three-minute rounds. The fight was politically charged.
Considering that the system offered the first place in his weight to Erislandy Savón, a nephew of the legendary Félix Savón, the untouchable Olympic legend of Cuban boxing, the Spaniard escaped from Cuba to Moscow, the only country to which he could fly without an exit visa with his passport. After a thousand adventures he went through Belarus, Germany, Austria, where he was detained and spent four months in a refugee centre, until he finally arrived in Barcelona without papers. “Leaving Cuba was difficult because I left many loved ones and I didn’t know how I would get to Spain. They were difficult months, jumping borders, always afraid of being detained, without papers,” he explains. “But at the end of it all, I was able to get to my family.”
His father was already living in A Coruña and when he was able to meet up with his son he called Lozano to tell him to try him out, that he was very good. “And I told him that being Cuban he had to be good by any means,” explains the Spanish coach, from Cordoba, from Cerro Muriano.
With this rough past, no one was surprised that on the eve of his fight with La Sombra, July 21, in Tokyo, in a gym with no public, he made statements criticizing the regime he had fled. La Sombra responded with his fists and, thanks to the referee’s influence, in the majority opinion, he was able to shout after his victory the slogan “Homeland or Death!”
Like Muhammad Ali, champion in Rome 1960, the Olympic myth above all myths, the Prophet, he abandoned the Christian faith and embraced the Muslim faith. He shares with his younger friend and companion, Ayoub, whose idol is, of course, Ali, 24 years old, the reasons for becoming a boxer. “They beat me up at school and my father told me to learn to defend myself,” he explains. The profitand Ayoub says in the biography prepared by the Olympic website that this is precisely why he went to a kickboxing gym in Marbella, where he was born and lived, as a child. “They picked on me a lot at school out of pure racism and because I was fat,” Ayoub recalls. “I came home crying every day.”
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