Reynaldo González López

Cuban sports executive, member of the International Olympic Committee. He has held positions in the International Baseball Federation and in the Pan American Sports Organization. He was born in Ciego de Ávila, located in the central region of Cuba.

He completed his primary, secondary, and pre-university education in Camagüey alongside his brothers and other family members. During his youth, he practiced various sports, including baseball, softball, volleyball, and sport fishing. He also graduated in pedagogy, and later obtained a degree in Social Sciences.

He began his career as a sports executive within INDER, where he became president of the Cuban sports organization, while simultaneously working in baseball in the defunct AIMBA, and later in the IBAF. He participated at the same time in ODEPA, ODECABE, and other regional sports organizations. In 1981 he was appointed first vice president of INDER, a position he held until 1994, when he was elected president of the organization.

From that initial year he held the presidency of the Cuban Baseball Federation, a position he held until 1999. Between 1984 and 2000 he was secretary of the Cuban Olympic Committee. In 1988 he was elected first vice president of the International Association of Amateur Baseball, a position he held until 1999, when within the IBAF he began serving on the ethics commission.

When the organizing committee for the XI Pan American Games Havana 1991 was formed in 1987, he was selected as secretary general of this organizing body (COPAN 91). Previously in 1982 he had been vice president of the organizing committee for the XIV Central American and Caribbean Games held in Havana.

Since 1996 he has been the Cuban representative to the International Olympic Committee, in the world's highest sports organization. He is also a member of the working group on women's sports. In that organization he is part of the women's sports commission and was a member of the editorial committee during the Olympic Congress, 2007 to 2009.

Between 1997 and 2001 he served as national director of university sports. In the Pan American Sports Organization, he has served, among other functions, as general coordinator of the Olympic Solidarity program for countries in the region. In 2007 he was selected by several federations on the continent as a candidate for the presidency of the IBAF. He was one of three candidates for the position, along with Dutchman Theo Reitsma and American Harvey Schiller, who was ultimately elected president of the organization. The Cuban candidate's candidacy was based on the proposal of three fundamental issues with a view to achieving baseball's return to the Olympic Games: the universalization of baseball, doping, and the creation of bridges with professional organizations in the United States. "We are working very hard, there is much to be done because evidently what we did previously was insufficient and led to us being removed from the Olympic program in July 2005".

Since 2010 he has been executive secretary of the Pan American Sports Organization, collaborating closely in the organization of the XIX Pan American Games held in Guadalajara, Mexico in 2011. In 2007 he was awarded as the best international baseball executive of the IBAF from 2005 to that year.

In this regard, the then president of the IBAF, American Harvey Schiller, in announcing the appointment, emphasized the international prestige gained by the Cuban executive, whom he described as "An active fighter for the promotion and development of baseball throughout the world".

In 2014 he was appointed vice president of the new World Baseball and Softball Confederation (WBSC).

The first Olympic Order awarded posthumously by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to a Cuban was granted to Reynaldo González López, a former member of that organization who died on July 4, 2015.
The distinction was received by his family members during the last IOC Session on August 21 in Rio de Janeiro, the closing date of the XXI Olympic Games.

Reinaldo is the tenth Cuban to be decorated with the Olympic Order.