Rower Ángel Fournier, considered the best in Cuba of all time, died of a heart attack at the age of 35, state media reported.
Fournier, who had resided in the United States with his family since 2020 after resigning from the Cuban national team, stood out for his relevant international performances and became the figurehead of Cuban rowing for more than ten years.
Coming from the youth category, Fournier has already shown his qualities at the Alba Games in Havana in 2005, where he won a silver medal.
Considered a glory of Cuban sport, the young man won three medals at the world championships in single sculls: a silver in Chungju in 2013, the following year he won bronze in Amsterdam in 2014 and in 2017 he repeated a silver medal in Sarasota.
The rower was also Pan American champion in Guadalajara in 2011, twice in Toronto in 2015 -in the single and double scull modalities and in quadruple sculls- and in Lima in 2019.
As an Olympic singles competitor, Fournier made his debut in Beijing in 2008, where he finished in twelfth place, and did not reach the final. But at London 2012 he finished seventh, and at Rio de Janeiro 2016 he was sixth in the same event.
In the years 2014 and 2017 he was among the ten best athletes of those years in Cuba.
The Cuban Discipline Federation expressed its condolences to the family and friends of the rower born on December 31, 1987 in the municipality of Caimanera, in the eastern province of Guantanamo.
“It is a blow for all of us who knew him,” wrote the president of the Federation and also rowing commissioner on the island, Ángel Luis García, quoted by Jit, a publication of the Institute. national sports, physical education and recreation. (Inder). .