It is all the fault of a Russian magazine, in which Cuban Wilfredo Diaz discovered retrounning 32 years ago, or backward running.
This week, he's going all the way to Italy to compete in a half-marathon in this way… in the mountains.
"I feel very good […] I managed to restart the whole machine", and "I will give my best for Cuba", he assures during training, surrounded by young people playing football. , on school grounds in western Havana.
“Better prepared” than ever
On Sunday, during the Dolomiti Extreme Trail Half Marathon in Forno di Zoldo, Italy, he will be the only one going backwards. But the 46-year-old ex-walker says he's “better prepared” than ever. But the Sunday race presents an additional difficulty: the terrain will be "atypical" with "for the first time in the mountains". But Wilfredo adapted his training.
This psychologist has already won five medals at the world championships of this atypical sport: one in gold (in the 4x400m relay), three in silver and one in bronze.
The World Cup in this discipline, the eighth organized since the one celebrated for the first time in Switzerland in 2006, should have been held in July 2020 in Enfield, England, but had to be canceled due to a pandemic.
It was then postponed to this summer, at the end of July in France, but the health context is still causing uncertainty.
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Cuba
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Italy
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