Cuban Luis Orta, 67 kilograms (kg), won the award for best Greco-Roman wrestler of 2023, chosen by the World Wrestling Union (UWW).

This was published on its official website by the UWW, recognizing Orta’s excellent results this year, in which he added the title at the World Championship held in Belgrade, Serbia, last September.

Olympic champion in Tokyo 2020, the Cuban gladiator won the gold medal in that event with a close score of 4-3 against Hasrat Jafarov, from Azerbaijan, and with that performance he touched the glory at the highest universal level.

Along with the representative of the Island, selected on Monday the best male athlete of 2023 in the Caribbean nation, another of the winners was Aisuluu Tynybekova, from Kyrgyzstan, designated the most outstanding in wrestling for women, and for the men, the bookseller Akhmed Tazhudinov, Russian nationalized in Bahrain.

Also for the island, Gabriel Rosillo (97 kg), world champion in Belgrade, deserved the distinction in the category of great performance of the year, which is another award for the sport of wrestling in the country.

Both Rosillo and Orta also won gold medals at the Central Caribbean Games in San Salvador, which concluded in August, and at the Pan American Games in Santiago de Chile, which ended in November.

In those events, they once again demonstrated their physical and technical capabilities to leave each of their rivals without options, unable to overcome two athletes of the highest stature.

As if that were not enough in the case of Orta, at the beginning of the year in January he won the crown in the Henri Deglane Grand Prix of wrestling, in Nice, France, where he won 7-2 in the final against the local Tigran Galustyan.

Then, in February he won the bronze medal in the first Ranking Series of this combat sport held in Zagreb, Croatia, and repeated the color of the medal in the Kyrgyzstan stop.