Posted on Wed, Aug. 29, 2007
By WILL WEISSERT
HAVANA --
(AP) -- Cuba won't send a boxing team to the world championships in
Chicago, heeding Fidel Castro's fears about future defections after two
fighters abandoned their teammates during the Pan American Games.
The competition is one of three qualifying tournaments for the 2008
Olympics.
''We will not expose anew a Cuban boxing team to the abuses and
provocations that in this case will be present in Chicago, American
territory, the perfect location for marketers and traffickers to act
freely and with the total complicity of U.S. authorities,'' the Cuban
Boxing Federation said Wednesday.
But the federation insisted Cuba won't forgo next year's Olympics,
stating that there will be ``other opportunities to win qualification
for Beijing 2008.''
''That's a right that all members of the Cuban sports movement have and
one we will exercise at the appropriate moment,'' boxing officials said
in a statement published in official newspapers.
Guillermo Rigondeaux, Cuba's top boxer and a two-time Olympic
bantamweight champion, and Erislandy Lara, an amateur welterweight world
champion, vanished for about two weeks last month in Brazil, only to be
arrested and deported. The fighters say they never intended to defect
and asked to return to Cuba, but a German promoter insists both signed
five-year contracts and officials at the German Embassy in Brazil claim
the pair sought visas.
The 81-year-old Castro has not been seen in public since emergency
intestinal surgery forced him to cede power to his younger brother 13
months ago. But he proclaimed in an Aug. 7 essay that Rigondeaux and
Lara would never fight for Cuba again, saying ``the athlete who abandons
his delegation is not unlike the soldier who abandons his fellow men in
the midst of combat.''
Castro hinted the boxing federation would pull out of the worlds, which
begin Oct. 21 at the University of Chicago, saying ''just picture the
mafia sharks lurking about in search of fresh meat,'' referring to
would-be promoters who could try to persuade Cuban fighters to desert.
''Cuba will not sacrifice one bit of honor, nor any of its ideas, for
Olympic gold medals,'' Castro wrote.
The Cuban boxing federation said ''many factors'' influenced its
decision, but Castro's defection worries carried the most weight.
''The robbery of everything that stands out in Cuban society, it doesn't
matter if its an athlete, teacher, doctor, artist, scientist or anything
else, has been the practice of different U.S. governments in their
permanent political aggression against our people,'' its statement said.
In reaching its decision, the federation wrote, it ``profoundly analyzed
the threats of groups that with teams of negotiators serve one of the
most vile interests of the United States and some of its allies, the
theft of athletes.''
The federation also criticized the International Amateur Boxing
Association for failing to stop promoters who lure fighters into
deserting during international tournaments, and looking the other way in
the face of ``permanent aggressions against Cuba and its athletics.''
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/219216.html
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