Yahoo! August 3, 2000
Dignity Urged For Cuban Athletes
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA, 3 (AP) - Declaring collective dignity more valuable than personal glory, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque exhorted Cuba's Olympic team members not to sell out to those who tempt them with money to desert their country.
"Personal glory is fleeting,'' Perez Roque said in an especially strong speech during a ceremony turning over the flag to the 241 men and women who will represent Cuba in 21 sports at the games in Sydney next month.
"We do not come here to ask you to be champions,'' the foreign minister said in a ceremony attended by President Fidel Castro and the rest of the nation's leadership. "We ask you to comport yourself with honor and dignity.''
Two-time Olympic heavyweight champion Felix Savon, along with the rest of Cuba's powerful 12-member boxing team, was there. So was high-jump champion Javier Sotomayor, who was thrilled earlier in the day to learn that the world governing body of amateur track and field ruled to cut his two-year
drug suspension in half - a move that will allow him to compete in Sydney.
Also among members of the Olympic team was baseball superstar first baseman Omar Linares, who has said he turned down an offer of $8 million to play for the American major leagues.
It's unclear how receptive the Australian government would be to asylum attempts by Cuban athletes. Overwhelmed by a wave of immigrants from Asia and the Middle East, the government in June launched new videos that warn off illegal boat people with sinister images of sharks, crocodiles and
snakes.
Nevertheless, the force and tone of Perez Roque's speech indicated serious concern about possible attempts to woo top athletes into what he described as "mercenary sports.''
Unlike sports agents, "we do not see machines of muscles, we see sensitive men and women,'' Perez Roque said.
Sotomayor said he was grateful to the Cuban people and Castro for believing in him after he was stripped of his gold medal in the high jump at least year's Pan American games after testing positive for cocaine.
"We Cuban athletes have no price,'' Sotomayor told fellow Olympic team members. "We don't give in nor do we sell ourselves, nor do we exchange the affectionate applause of millions for millions of dollars of contempt.''
The two-time world high-jump champion and the world record-holder has maintained his innocence and has said that his urine test results were manipulated to bring shame to the communist country's sports program.
While pleased he can compete in Sydney, he was unhappy that the International Amateur Athletic Association did not exonerate him when it ruled in Monte Carlo, Monaco, on Wednesday.
"I am happy, but not totally satisfied,'' Sotomayor told The Associated Press before the evening ceremony. "I want to keep trying to clean up my image. That is my goal.''
Cuba criticizes the commercialization of athletes by capitalist countries and considers those who abandon "revolutionary sports'' for professional sports to be guilty of treason.
At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, star pitcher Rolando Arrojo defected and was branded a traitor by Castro. Arrojo now pitches for the Boston Red Sox.
Longtime Cuban boxing coach Mariano Leyva also sought political asylum in the United States during the Summer Games in Atlanta.
Last week, four members of Cuba's indoor soccer team visiting Costa Rica for a regional sports competition defected and sought political asylum to stay in the Central American country.
Although baseball player Andy Morales traveled several times outside of Cuba for international competitions, last month he made his second, successful attempt to emigrate to the United States.
Morales, a third baseman best known in the United States for hitting a home run during Cuba's 12-6 victory over the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards last year, first left the island on a boat in late May. He was picked up at sea and repatriated after U.S. officials determined he did not qualify
for political asylum.
Oakland Mayor Visits Cuba
OAKLAND, Calif. 3 (AP) - Mayor Jerry Brown says his weeklong trip to Cuba will pay off if the United States ends its trade embargo of the communist country.
"Oakland has a chance to be in there first,'' Brown said Tuesday. "We're not talking too long before this whole market opens up.''
Brown met twice with Cuban President Fidel Castro during his visit last week. He said Castro stressed his desire for trade with the United States and California in particular.
He also worked on a sister city agreement with the Cuban city of Santiago de Cuba, birthplace of the Cuban revolution.
Congress voted two weeks ago to relax the embargo on food and medicine and travel to Cuba, but the measures were dropped last week.
Cuba Boxing Coach Eyes Olympic Sweep
By Vivian Sequera, Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA, 3 (AP) - With heavyweight Felix Savon going for a third gold medal, Cuba's Olympic boxing coach aims for a sweep at the Sydney Games.
"We are going to clean up,'' Alcides Sagarra said Wednesday. "What we want is the national hymn (played) 12 times, our flag raised 12 times.
"All of our enemies are working to knock over the hegemony of the Cuban school of boxing. ... We are not going to let them.''
In 1996 at the Olympics in Atlanta, Cuba won four gold medals and two silver medals.
Also going to Sydney is Maikro Romero, 112-pound champion at the 1996 Games. This time he will box at 106 pounds.
Sagarra was flanked by Jose Barrientos, president of the Cuban Boxing Federation, at a news conference to announce the 12-member team.
The Cuban boxers will travel to Sydney two weeks before the games, which open Sept. 15.
Savon won Olympic gold medals in the 201-pound class at Barcelona in 1992 and at Atlanta. Teofilo Stevenson was Olympic heavyweight champion for Cuba at Munich in 1972, Montreal in 1976 and Moscow in 1980.
Savon also won world championships in 1989, 1991, 1993 and 1995.
"Felix Savon is in good physical shape,'' said Sagarra, adding that he is not pressuring Savon about a third gold medal. "Felix has beaten all the boxers there.''
Also on the team are Manuel Mantilla, 112; Guillermo Rigondeaux, 119; Enrique Carrion, 125; Mario Kindelan, 132; Diogenes Luna, l39; Roberto Guerra, 147; Juan Hernandez, 156; Jorge Gutierrez, 165; Israel Alvarez, 178; and Alexis Rubalcaba, super heavyweight. | 