Those who have known him since he was a boy have seen him playing basketball and baseball, and running track in his free time. His father hoped he would follow his steps and become a great volleyball player. The fact is that none of these sports were fated to become the real passion of Rafael Alba.
Some say he’s too thin, others say too tall, but his 90 kilos on a 2.01 meter frame have helped him become one of the country’s most complete practitioners of taekwondo.
Rafael recalls that he began taekwondo at 10 years of age, saying, “All this began as a craze in Habana del Este, but I stopped practicing and got involved in other disciplines. When I returned to my native province, Santiago de Cuba, I started training again and was recruited to enroll in the EIDE (sports academy). There I went through the entire high performance program until I became a member of the national team in 2011.”
At only 19 years of age, he won the 2013 World Championship in a tournament held in the Mexican city of Puebla.
“I remember that event with pleasure, I was well prepared, but very young and didn’t think I could win the title. Little by little, the competition advanced and I began to believe more in myself, until I succeeded. "
Despite recognizing that his sport is not at a high point in Cuba, he emphasized the current national team’s potential. "We’re going through a period of transition in this discipline, which today faces limitations. For example, for some time now, we have competed in an octagon and here we train and compete in a quadrilateral, without the electronic equipment used in official events," Alba said.
"In spite of all this, we train hard every day so that Cuban taekwondo reaches the desired glory again. We have several quality figures, and I think we can achieve good results in this cycle," he added.This year, the Cuban sports movement is targeting the Pan American Games and taekwondo is looking to contribute several gold medals. "I know that everyone expects me to win in Lima, that is my goal and I can do it; prior to that, I will participate in the qualifying event and in the Manchester World Championship, in the month of May, which is a very difficult tournament, but will contribute to my Olympic qualification,” Alba noted.“I would like to win a medal at the World Cup, but my main goal is the 2020 Olympic Games, every day I think about that event and am putting all my efforts into becoming a champion in Tokyo, that is the only title I lack among those awarded by the International Taekwondo Federation," he said. Rafael Alba is a young man of these times, at 25 he loves all the activities that someone of his age usually does. "Many times people think we only like what we practice, it's very different, I'm also a lover of other sports, and in my free time I love going out to parties, dancing, going to the beach, hanging out with my friends, among other things that I also do."As an athlete who doesn’t live in the capital, the support of my family has been very important; being away from them is not easy and I owe all my accomplishments in sports to them. When there is an imbalance at home, I see it in my performance," he noted.
