Daylis Caballero Vega's Journey From Cuban Defector To U.S. Citizen Reveals The Quality Of Her Character, Hard Work

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

Chad Andrews didn’t know what to make of it.

The pole vault coach was training kids one afternoon on a track in the Dallas area when a woman came toward him, running across the infield from her parked car.

The woman smiled and began to talk excitedly. Andrews couldn’t decipher her Spanish, but he got the two words she kept saying over and over: “Pole vault!”

Andrews, a self-described Texas ‘good ‘ol boy,’ and coach of the Texas Express Track Club, suggested she write her name and e-mail down on a piece of paper.

Later that night, he typed the words Daylis Caballero Vega into a Google search.

His eyes widened.

“I think an Olympian just fell into my lap,” he said.

That was more than five years ago. Caballero Vega, a member of the Cuban national team at the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, South Korea and the 2012 Olympic Games in London, had disappeared from the sport.

By the time she ran into Andrerws, she was scratching out an existence in the U.S. and searching for a step up from the menial jobs she had found where she could be paid under the table.

Seeing kids on a field pole vaulting had triggered an idea. Maybe I can coach pole vaulting!

She crossed that field and approached the coach in order to establish a connection, perhaps make a new friend, to tell somebody: Pole Vault!

A later discussion with Andrews didn’t produce the desired outcome.

“She wanted to coach, but she didn’t know any English,” he said. “I had to say, ‘I’m sorry, but that’s not going to work.’”

At least not yet.

Rising Up

Daylis Caballero Vega grew up in Havana, Cuba and trained to be a gymnast for 10 years, starting when she was 5.

By the time she reached 16 years old, she had grown too tall to continue the sport. She moved into pole vaulting and was a quick study. Her natural athleticism, honed by years of swinging on bars and sprinting down vault runways, enabled her to rise to prominence.

She cleared 13 feet, 1.50 inches, or 4.00 meters, for the first time in 2007 and improved to 13-11.25 (4.25m) a year later.

She emerged, along with Yarisley Silva, as a global player in the pole vault. She made the 2011 Pan Am Games team and IAAF World Championships team for Cuba, and traveled to South Korea.

Seeing life outside Cuba gave her a deeper understanding of the crushing poverty, lack of resources and dismal prospects for anything better.

Caballero Vega qualified for the Cuban Olympic team. Her mind drifted away from the competition and onto the opportunity that an overseas trip provided. She smuggled six boxes of Cuban cigars into her luggage and flew to a team training camp in Spain before moving on to London.

Her primary objective in the Athletes’ Village was to sell cigars door to door and pocket as much cash as possible to take back home.

“Cuba is a poor country, so having the opportunity to go out was a huge thing, to be able to make a little money,” Caballero Vega said. “Cuban cigars, they are the best in the world. It was kind of easy to make some extra money doing that. You have to do what you can to keep surviving.”

Cuba is one of the world’s last communist holdouts, one of four left on the planet besides China, Laos and Vietnam. Despite a thawing relationship with the U.S., economic opportunity is scarce. As a student and national team athlete, Caballero Vega said she subsisted on a diet of rice and beans and a stipend of $20 per month.

“At the Olympics, I didn’t focus on the meet or competition,” she said. “I was trying to sell cigars. Young as I was, my mentality was different. The last thing I was thinking was being an athlete.”

Two days before her competition, she twisted an ankle and it began to swell.

“I competed, but I didn’t make a height,” she said. “It was one of the sad things in my life. After, I cried. I had fun at (the Olympics), but the only thing that wasn’t fun was not competing.”

As she returned home, the resolve to leave Cuba was already deep-set in her mind. She’d already been thinking about defecting for two years.

She just needed the right opportunity. And pole vaulting, she knew, was her ticket out.

In early 2013, Cuban officials picked some athletes to go to Spain to train and compete indoors in Europe. Silva, the 2012 Olympic silver medalist, was selected. Caballero Vega was not.

“Cuba doesn’t have an indoor facility, so when we compete, we have to go out of the country,” Caballero Vega said. “That year they didn’t have money to send me. They left me and it made me really upset. It was a nightmare. Really bad.”

Months later, word came that she would go on a trip to the United States in April, to the Drake Relays in Des Moines, Iowa.

“When the Drake Relays come up, I know,” Caballero Vega said. “It’s over.”

Clearing The Bar

In Des Moines, Silva drew the spotlight and enjoyed a great week of vaulting. She won the indoor exhibition at Jordan Creek Town Center and then prevailed in the “London Games Rematch” against Olympic gold medalist Jenn Suhr with a clearance at 15-11 (4.85m).

Caballero Vega’s focus was not on vaulting. She made only the opening height, finishing 10th.  

The next morning, the Cuban delegation prepared to go shopping for items that they could stuff into their luggage and re-sell back in Cuba. Caballero Vega begged off the excursion, complained of a stomach ache, was administered a pill for indigestion, and remained in bed. They were to fly home later in the day.

A short time after she was left alone, Caballero Vega pushed back her bedsheets, grabbed her belongings, and walked out a side door of the Des Moines Sheraton.

She got into a waiting car, driven by the son of her Godmother, a fellow Cuban already in the United States. He had come from Kentucky to pick her up in a rental car, accompanied by his wife and young daughter.

“I wouldn’t say it was difficult,” Caballero Vega said of her defection. “It was scary. I won’t go back to my country. I don’t know the language. There’s crazy people here. But this is what you want to do.”

Metaphorically, it was the biggest jump of her life.

The car pulled out of the parking lot and entered the freeway. Each mile pulled Caballero Vega farther away from Cuba.

But then, an hour after walking out of the hotel, there was cause for panic.

A police officer turned on his lights and pulled them over.

“Oh, Jeez!” Caballero Vega remembers thinking. “They caught me! I believed they would report me right away. I had seen things like that in movies.”

The driver of the car calmly explained that they had picked up a visiting cousin at the airport, from Cuba, and they were driving back home.

The officer looked at Caballero Vega, leaned in, and said:

“Welcome to America.”

Back In The Swing

More than six years later, and just one since she resumed training as an elite pole vaulter, Caballero Vega and two of her Texas Elite coaches – Andrews and Jennifer Fore – drove to Des Moines from Texas for the Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships at Drake Stadium.

It was Daylis’ first visit back to Des Moines since 2013, when she defected.

Before the competition, the trio stopped by the Sheraton and Caballero Vega showed her coaches the spot where she crossed the breach between Cuban and American.

“This is the place,” she said, walking toward the entrance. “This is the place that gave me the freedom.”

Walking into the lobby, her excitement and happiness was replaced by a flood of emotions. She covered her face in her hands and slumped to the floor.

“Six years. I never thought I would come back here,” she said.

Caballero Vega, a United States citizen for a little more than thee months, competed in her first national championship at Des Moines in late July, placing fifth. She made the first three bars in a row on her first attempt, including 15-1 (4.60m), a new lifetime best at 31 years old.

She was ecstatic. INTERVIEW

The next day, on the drive with her friends back to Texas, she got word that she would have an opportunity to represent the U.S. at The Match: Europe vs. The USA, Sept. 9-10 in Minsk, Belarus.

Opening Height

In April of 2013, Caballero Vega wanted just one thing: A new life outside of Cuba.

It wasn’t easy.

She knew only one language and it wasn’t English. After the drive to Kentucky, she made her to a few other Cubans that could take her, in the Carolinas.

She went to an immigration office in North Carolina.

“Welcome to America,” she remembers being told.

However, she learned that she would have to wait one year and one day in order to apply for a Green Card, which would give her legal permission to live and work in the U.S.

Until then, Caballero Vega was somewhat protected by the Clinton-era “wet feet, dry feet” policy that said Cubans who were detained at sea trying to get into the U.S. would be sent back to the island, while Cubans who made it to the U.S. mainland would qualify for “legal permanent resident” status, in accordance with the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act.

So for a year, Caballero Vega knew she was likely safe from deportation, and yet she had no official paperwork. (The “wet feet, dry feet” policy was rescinded in 2017 by Barack Obama.)

Word of her situation leaked out and she was invited to Abilene Christian University in Texas by a coach who agreed to help her. She moved in, briefly, with the coach and his family.

But that arrangement didn’t work out. Months after leaving the Sheraton in Des Moines, Caballero Vega was in Texas, and on her own.

Pole vaulting was set aside, perhaps for good.

Caballero Vega needed to find work. She got a job in the kitchen of a Mexican restaurant, where she could comfortably communicate with her employer. She worked in a warehouse. She briefly took a job at a car dealership. “I think I sold one car,” she said.

She cleaned houses. She washed dishes.

“They have to pay you under the table,” she said. “I had to be able to make money.”

Did she regret being plunged into difficult circumstances in a strange country?

“Oh Lord, I always said, ‘Man, I’m good!’” Caballero Vega explained. “If I have to sleep in the car. If I have to clean the dishes from the table, I’m cool! I’m happy. I don’t care.

“My salary in Cuba was $20 a month. So when I was in America making $300 a month, I was rich. Can you understand that?”

She missed her mother, yes. But no regrets.

“It’s hard. I’m tired sometimes. You’ve got to work here. But, I would rather be here than Cuba,” she said.

Over time, her desire to succeed and an infectious, upbeat personality helped her gain traction in her new home.

She acquired a phone and learned about Facebook and other social media. In Cuba, she didn't know what the internet was.

A married couple that heard her story offered her a used 1990s Hyundai.

“I think they give it to me because I was nice,” she said. “But nobody teach me how to drive. I cannot say, ‘no’ because I need a car to move. I was tired of walking.”

Without any way to get a license, Caballero Vega took a seat in her car, put the key in the ignition, grabbed the steering wheel with two hands and put her feet on the accelerator and brake pedals – and taught herself how to operate a vehicle.

She learned the rules of the road, and how to navigate intersections, by searching on Google.

“I was going late, when there were few cars on the street, after rush hour,” she said.

After a year and a day, she applied for her Green Card and began the five-year wait to become a full-fledged U.S. citizen.

She taught herself to speak English and began to hatch a plan to become a teacher.

Years passed.

In late 2017, Caballero Vega stopped by a pole vault competition put together by Andrews, just to watch and hang out.

By now she was a teacher’s assistant. She had a little bit of stability.

With the encouragement of Andrews and Fore, a Master’s pole vaulter who joined the Texas Express coaching staff, Caballero Vega started thinking about competing again.

“At first, I said I didn’t want to do this,” she said of her initial foray into training. “I know how hard it is being an athlete. In the back of my mind, ‘Oh Lord Jesus, not again, please.’”

In the summer of 2018, with the encouragment of her friends at the Texas Express Track Club, she trained for a single week and then picked up a pole to see what she could still do with it. To her surprise, she could still make 14 feet.

“I thought, at first, maybe she would come back and do some Master’s competitions,” Andrews said. “Then when I saw her vault in person, I was like, ‘Whoa!’ She’s still got it.”

Caballero Vega continued to train, on the weekends, along with some nights after work, and got back into shape. In the 12 months before her triumphant return to Des Moines, she lost 30 pounds.

She became one of the club's coaches, after a long wait, earning the moniker "Coach D." She clicked back into the sport that gave her passage out of Cuba and made her an Olympian. Texas Express is probably the only club in the country with an Olympian sharing the runway with kids.

“Her takeoff and lift off the ground is what makes her elite,” Andrews said. “She does that as well as anyone in the world.”

As 2019 began, Caballero Vega's muscles continued to harden and take shape and she began making higher and higher bars.  

She made 14-4.75 (4.39m) and then 14-6.25 (4.43m). At Texas Tech, she jumped 14-9 (4.50m) and matched her lifetime best.

“In five months, I got to 4.50m,” she said. “I was just like, ‘Wow.’”

She wore a blue dress the day she became a U.S. citizen, on April 18. If it dragged on another month, she might not have been ruled eligible to compete at nationals.

The timing worked out.

After learning of the opportunity to wear the U.S. uniform in the dual meet against Europe, Caballero Vega was overjoyed.

The third-year teaching assistant approached her principal at Rufus C. Burleson Elementary School and asked whether she could have a few days off to fly to Belaus and compete for the U.S.

“I’m the kind of person, I don’t want to sound weird,” she said. “It was hard to ask, because I want to be quiet and normal.”

But none of this is normal.

“Everything Daylis touches turns to gold,” said Andrews, a former decathlete at Texas Tech, moments before he and Fore boarded a flight Thursday to Belarus.  

“She deserves everything that she’s gotten. She has worked incredibly hard,” Fore said.  

Caballero Vega holds out hope, buoyed by an amazing 2019, that she can contend for a spot on the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team at next year’s Trials in Eugene, Ore.

It's a position she couldn't have imagined in her wildest dreams.

“I feel in shock,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on. Can I see God and say thank you to you?”

Her mother, who she hasn’t seen since she defected more than six years ago, offers encouragement from afar.

“My mama says, ‘Next step Tokyo,’” Caballero Vega said. “I said ‘Mom, that would be incredible!’”

First is Belarus, and her first international competition since London seven years ago. 

Renewed Olympic dreams, and the chance to compete again on the world’s biggest stage without the pressure to sell cigars … and to correct the regret that stems from a no-height result? Those motivations will sustain Caballero Vega through a second winter of training in Texas.

A new land of opportunity stretches out before her.

Welcome to America.