Havana/The month of November has been a nightmare for the sports authorities on the Island with the escape of seven athletes. The most recent withdrawals were those of the basketball player Liset Valdés Santa Cruz and the handball goalkeeper Luis Alberto Alazales Servera, as revealed by the portal Cubalite.
Santa Cruz disassociated himself from Cuban sports in El Salvador. According to the same media, he did not board the plane and assured the same media that his intention is to “continue in basketball.” The 20-year-old from Havana was one of the standouts in the FIBA 3×3 AmeriCup 2026 tournament, in which the Island achieved fourth place after the defeat against Colombia 15-12.
The young athlete has professional experience and it was in El Salvador, with the Monseñor Romero club that she received her first opportunity in 2024. The next stage was experienced last year with the Portuguese team AD Vagos and recently with the Madj Tanja team from Morocco with which her contract ended this month.
Santa Cruz is represented by Oro Sports Company, the international agency based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, dedicated to the representation and guidance of professional female basketball players and coaches.
For his part, Luis Alberto Alazales Servera was the starting goalkeeper of the Cuban handball team that won the gold medal after beating Mexico 38-30, in the IHF U-21 Trophy, in Quebec, Canada.
![Luis Alberto Alazales Servera was the starting goalkeeper of the Cuban handball team that won the gold medal after beating Mexico 38-30, in the IHF under-21 Trophy.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 16 9"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
/ Facebook/TA9
He space on Facebook Cuba on the way to Los Angeles 2028 He highlighted Alazanes as “one of the great protagonists of the event.” For his performance, he was recognized by the organizers as the most valuable player of the final.
Cuba got the ticket to the U-21 Men’s Handball World Championship that will take place in June 2027 in North Macedonia. Furthermore, those led by Yunier Hernández concluded this event undefeated, with four wins and one draw.
The goalkeeper has previous international experience. He was part of the national team in the World Cup of the category held in Greece and Germany (2024) and in the Junior Pan American Games in Asunción, Paraguay (2025).
“These two cases join a growing list of athletes who decide to seek their future outside of Cuba, among them judo, wrestling and weightlifting figures,” stressed retired wrestler Roly Dámaso.
“Cuban talent continues to shine, but more and more are looking outside the island for the future that they cannot find in their own country,” he added.
Before the escapes of Liset Valdés Santa Cruz and Luis Alberto Alazales Servera, Yusneylis Guzmán Lópezsilver medalist in the 50 kilogram wrestling category at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, escaped during a stopover in Mexico when the national wrestling team was traveling to Brazil.
Days later, the judokas escaped Jonathan Charón, Lianet Cardona, Dayanara Curbelo and Orlando Polanco after winning medals in Florida.
In 2025, the agency EFE published a report about the escape of athletes and recalled that the abandonment of Cuban athletes during international trips has occurred for more than three decades.
The publication estimated that nearly 800 athletes had left sports delegations in that period, although this is a journalistic count and not a consolidated official statistic.
