Cuba admits defections taking toll on sports performance

Cuba admits defections taking toll on sports performance
February 7, 2014 5:24 PM
By Nelson Acosta

HAVANA (Reuters) - The head of Cuba's volleyball federation has blamed a
decline in the country's competitiveness on foreign teams poaching its
best players in a rare official admission that defections have hurt
Cuban performance in international events.

The comments came just as a depleted Cuban baseball team returned home
from a disappointing early elimination in the Caribbean Series of
baseball tournament in Venezuela.

Cuba has often lamented that Major League Baseball has siphoned off some
of its best talent to the United States. The complaint about volleyball
players was directed more toward Italy and Brazil, where male and female
stars from Cuba have defected to play professionally.

Cuba returned to the Caribbean Series of baseball this month after a
54-year absence, raising hopes among fans of the national sport, but the
Cuban team was eliminated after winning only one game out of four
against teams from Mexico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Puerto
Rico.

"The number one reason for this significant decline in our competitive
results has been the subversive campaign by certain sectors in different
countries, who without showing any respect for the integrity of the
Cuban federation have bought Cuban players so that they abandon our
national team," the president of the Cuban Volleyball Federation, Ariel
Sainz, told the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma in Friday's edition.

To combat defections, Cuba this year started allowing its athletes to
play professional sports abroad, while also offering them slightly
better pay incentives at home.

Too many obstacles remain for baseball players to join MLB teams without
defecting, but Cubans have played in other countries' professional
baseball leagues. Under the law, the Cuban state taxes part of their
earnings and maintains rights over the players, such as recalling them
to play for the national team.

Cuba has dominated volleyball and baseball in the international arena,
with multiple Olympic gold medals and world championships in each sport.

After a number of high-profile male and female volleyball defections in
the last decade, the sport has yet to recover. In the latest World
League season, the Cuban men's team won only once in 10 matches.

The most notable baseball defections have occurred in recent years, when
some of Cuba's best players have signed multimillion-dollar contracts to
play abroad.

The Chicago White Sox signed Cuban slugger Jose Dariel Abreu to a
six-year, $68 million deal in October following the recent success of
pitchers Jose Fernandez of the Miami Marlins and Aroldis Chapman of the
Cincinnati Reds as well as outfielders Yasiel Puig of the Los Angeles
Dodgers and Yoenis Cespedes of the Oakland A's.

Others, however, have left their families behind and failed.

"The Cuban player has become the center of attention for these
merchants," Sainz added. "They make these offers for a possible material
solution to their problems and then a lot of the (athletes who leave)
are disappointed."

(Reporting by Nelson Acosta; editing by Daniel Trotta, G Crosse)

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