Manuel Vázquez Portal, Grupo
HAVANA, September - Leoncio del Valle y Castro will present a petition this week to the International Olympic Committee to allow him to participate in the Sidney Olympiad.
The young Cuban athlete, whose specialty is illicit escape, achieved this year the record of 16 attempts at illegal flight from the country. As a youth of barely 18 he set a personal best of twenty miles over fifty-five-gallon drums with sack-cloth sails in the turbulent waters of the Straits of
Florida.
Years later, after serving a three year sentence, he set the record for the 1,600 meter flat run to the landing gear of an Air France jet, where he was apprehended by Havana airport security agents. In the summer of 1998, already a seasoned athlete, Del Valle y Castro faced the crucial test of
his career when he found himself face to face with sharks in the Gulf Stream. Three of his fellow travellers didn’t make it. In a triumph over adversity, he made it back to the coast of Cárdenas to be hospitalized for several weeks.
In May 1999 he was returned by a U. S. Coast Guard cutter that pulled him out of the water off the Florida Keys.
Del Valle y Castro bases his demand to the International Olympic Committee in that, even though his specialty, the ninety miles with hurdles, is not an event widely practiced around the world, there are at least five million Cubans willing to compete in what should be the most crowded event in
the history of the Olympics.
Versión original en español
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