RIO DE JANEIRO: The name Peter Roque Otano probably won’t mean much even to most boxing fans.
But the Cuban is one of the most successful amateur boxing trainers in history, spanning a five-decade career that started in his homeland and currently finds him in Azerbaijan, via numerous other countries including the United States.
He says he has won more than 500 medals, including numerous Olympic golds and world championships, and he is the man behind some of the finest Cuban boxers of recent times.
Team USA called him “the best coach in the world” when it snapped him up in 2012.
Roque, who was once coach of his country’s national team and later defected, is at the Rio Olympics on just his latest assignment, masterminding Azerbaijan to what he hopes will be more glory for a young, unheralded team.
Like many Cubans, he does not wish to discuss what lay behind his reasons for leaving the country.
But talk to him about his many successes in boxing and Roque’s soft features open up.
Asked by AFP what his secret to boxing success was, Roque, who started boxing aged eight, said: “My whole life has been dedicated to boxing. You need dedication. Sometimes you even need to forget your family if you want to be successful.
“I have 46 years teaching and learning. But I need to keep learning. We have a young team here, but they learn from me — and I from them.”
The rest of the amateur boxing world also wants to draw on his rich experience, and he has visited more than 70 countries to give seminars and train young fighters.
“When you meet so many people, with so many cultures and different food, it opens your eyes and the breadth of your knowledge, and everything you learn is applicable in your work, in your life,” he says, speaking in his native Spanish.
But the affable Roque, who has a sports PhD from Moscow State University, has known failure too.
He understandably has no wish to dwell on the subject, but he left the Cuban team in 2009, a year after the Beijing Olympics, when Cuba — unthinkably — failed to win a single gold.
It still hurts.
And while he may not strike gold with Azerbaijan in Rio, his influence will still be on show with the current class of Cubans demolishing the opposition.
Before stepping up to coach the full Cuban boxing team, Roque led the youth national team and had under his wing triple gold medallist Felix Savon, former super featherweight champion Joel Casamayor, gold medallist Yuriorquis Gamboa and Guillermo Rigondeaux, a current pro champion.
He defected from Cuba in 2010 and settled in Miami within the city’s large Cuban community, living with his sister.
Although now estranged from his homeland, Roque still demands respect from the Cuban team in Rio, whose young boxers eagerly greet him.
He communicates to the Azeri fighters with the Russian he picked up in Moscow, then lapses into Spanish in the heat of a bout.
Do they understand him?
“Boxing is one language,” he says, switching to basic English.
“Punch, jab, body, head...”
’Best boxing coach in world’ who has won it all
’Best boxing coach in world’ who has won it all
