Tomás Herrera

Basketball player Tomás Herrera, known as Jabao, was a quick-thinking player who was an excellent ball handler and marker. He appeared in the three Olympic Games between 1972 and 1980, winning a bronze medal in the first one at München. He won six other major championship medals, starting at the 1970 Summer Universiade in Torino with a bronze.

The following year collected another bronze at the Pan American Games. His four other medals all came at the Central American and Caribbean Games, with silver in both 1970 and 1978 and gold at Santo Domingo in 1974 and on home soil at La Habana in 1982.

Herrera obtained a degree in political science, and after his playing days was head of the High Performance ports Section of the Union of Young Communists. From 2002 until his death, he served on the National Commission for Attention to Athletes. Two of Herrera’s nephews, Roberto and Ruperto, were both successful Cuban basketball players, but both fled the country to escape the Castro regime.