Associated Press
8/29/2007 11:49:51 AM
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 honour, 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 it's 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."
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