For the second time, Cuba dominated all three categories in the traditional poll, this time with triple jumper Leyanis Perez, pitcher Livan Moinelo, and the Cuban National Baseball 5 team taking center stage.

The triple jump champion was the clear favorite in the poll from its opening on November 21, leading with 73 votes in a category where 17 women received at least one nomination.

A champion in Japanese baseball, left-handed pitcher Moinelo is the first Cuban player to win the Latin American Male Athlete of the Year award. In this 61st edition, he garnered 42 votes, enough to surpass Argentine star Lionel Messi, his closest competitor with 19.

At the last minute, after several weeks of competition, the Cuban youth baseball 5 champions at the Nayarit World Championship rallied and, with the support of national media, won the award for best team with 37 votes, just four ahead of Argentina.

Cuba led the Prensa Latina poll only once before, in 1989, when high jumper Javier Sotomayor, runner Ana Fidelia Quirot, and the women’s volleyball team topped their respective categories.

This year’s edition received submissions from 70 foreign and 43 Cuban media outlets in a survey dedicated to the centenary of the birth of Commander Fidel Castro, architect of the sports movement on the island, and to the fifth anniversary of the death of Argentine star Diego Armando Maradona, winner of the Sports Survey in 1986.

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