ROMA (ITALPRESS) – “The 2025 was a really good season, but I am not satisfied because, even if I won the World Championship in Nanjing, the European in Apeldoorn (always indoors, ndr) and my third ‘Diamantè, I have not closed, as they say here in Italy, with the cherry on the cake. I had to do well the World Championship and take a medal, I couldn’t for a problem with the host who prevented me from giving the best. From here the decision to stop us a bit to analyze and recover, because however we have done four years pushing always very strong”. Andy Diaz Hernandez begins with the disappointment of the sixth place in Tokyo’s latest outdoor worlds to declare his ambitions for 2026.
A season in which the thirty-year-old Italian-Cuban triplet of the Yellow Flames, bronze at the Paris Olympics 2024, will have to lay the ground for the Los Angeles Summer Games 2028. “I started training more or less for a month – explains the blue champion in an interview at Italpress – I would say that as always my goals are the Indoor World Championship, where I hope to participate and give the most, and then the outdoor season, with the Diamond League stages. I would like to reach the best of the world in Diamond, Christian Taylor: he won five ‘Diamantì, I three, so I still miss two…”.
Born in Havana, he competed until 2021 with Cuba and then took refuge in Italy, welcomed under the protective wing of Fabrizio Donato. “As we all know, in Cuba there are problems and I had to abandon my family, my friends, everything, and start from scratch a new life – remembers Andy Diaz, who almost three years ago got Italian citizenship – I arrived here in Italy and I was lucky to find Fabrizio Donato and all his friends and colleagues who helped us. Above all, I must thank Italy because, with citizenship, he offered me a second life. I am reborn, Italy has given me the opportunity to continue to grow as a man and as a sportsman.”.
Diaz is an authentic lover of Belpaese: “I like people from Italy, they are very similar to Cubans and so I am very well. And then we all know that the best thing there is is food, especially carbonara… What would I improve in Italy? I have so much to thank and nothing to complain about. I do not complain about Italy and its problems, all countries have it. Thanks to Italy I have a new life and I am continuing to dream, having fun in athletics, the most beautiful thing in the world”.
By its direct experience, Italy is certainly not a racist country. Everything else. “I never had a problem and never felt it on my skin. I’ve always met really good people, so far I’ve never found myself in a situation of racism. I’ve seen images on social media, but it’s not that for a person you can say that all Italy is racist.”.
Diaz, who took part in the opening initiative of “The School is Life” during the Jubilee of the Educational World, holds two national records, the outdoor record (17.75 meters) and indoor (17.80). And the Italian athletics can still give a lot.
“We think my sports career started three years ago when I arrived in Italy. I would like to get up to 40 years, to be more or less equal with my coach Fabrizio Donato… More or less, since he competed up to 42. So I would say I still have ten years of athletics.” And, as all blue athletes hope, of other great successes with wearing the tricolor.
– Photo Italpress –
(ITALPRESS).
