Electronic Telegraph. UK. Sunday 20 August 2000
Olympic door opens for the tainted high-jumper but Cuba blocks the hopes of a fellow athlete, reports Owen Slot
TWO athletes, both world-beaters, both Cubans, stood on different sides of the athletics field in the Stade Louis II in Monte Carlo on Friday night, though they could have been worlds apart. One has twice tested positive for cocaine and will be allowed to compete in the Olympics, the other is
guilty of nothing more than marrying outside her country but will not.
The Monaco public made scant attempt to hide their feelings. When Javier Sotomayor was reintroduced to major competition, some took little heed of the fact that he is the world high-jump record-holder, the 1992 Olympic champion and an all-time great and they filled the air with boos of derision.
Sotomayor, his wrap-around sunglasses masking any sign of reaction, had been waiting a year for this moment though his reception suggested that the crowd believed he should have been waiting two. In a controversial decision two weeks previously, the International Amateur Athletics Federation had
been persuaded by Alberto Juantorena, the Cuban former giant of the track, to show compassion and reduce Sotomayor's ban from two years to one. The big man would therefore go to the Olympics.
So Sotomayor set about brushing up his act in Monte Carlo. It was not quite the same combination of speed and bounce that we have come to know - he looked heavier than before - but he cleared the modest height of 2.24 metres on his second attempt and if this was not enough to win back some
friends, his rivals were prepared to help. The bar was soon raised to 2.30m and, as he waited at the start of his run-up, his face fixed in mental preparation, Dragutin Topic, the Yugoslav, encouraged the crowd to start the traditional pre-jump rhythmical applause which competitors so enjoy. The
crowd responded. In the space of six centimetres he had suddenly found some friends.
Just 80-odd metres around the track, at the long-jump pit, Niurka Montalvo was attempting to find some inspiration of her own. Motivation has been hard to come by in her last two meetings, for conversely to Sotomayor, she has had her Olympics snatched away.
Montalvo, a serene, graceful 31-year-old, was the surprise world champion in Seville last year. The locals revelled in her success because she was by then married to a Spaniard, living in Spain and competing and winning for Spain too. No one imagined then that Cuba would block her from the
Olympics.
The Olympic rules state that if an athlete does not have three years of citizenship in his or her new country, then consent for a switch of allegiance is required from the former country. It was only 10 days ago that Montalvo was informed by a Spanish journalist that Cuba's consent had not been
given; the exact word that Juantorena had, in fact, used was "treason".
While Montalvo festered desperately on the news, the Spanish federation turned her case into a controversy in international relations. They threatened to cut Spanish funding of Cuban athletes, they threatened to throw the Cuban team out of the training camp outside Madrid that they had been
using like a second home for 15 years. Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, said the stand-off was so tense that a solution could only be made at a political level.
The Cubans took the hint and moved camp to a sports centre 200 kilometres outside Rome, but there was no shifting of their stance on Montalvo. The number of competitors in Sydney who have crossed nationalities will reach three figures, but Cubans will not partake. "The theft of athletes,"
said Juantorena, "is a scandal"; Montalvo, he said, "is the fruit of Cuba's sports movement".
So as Montalvo worked away under the stadium's floodlights, this was the backdrop that explained her stuttering performance. She had, of course, been planning to be coming to her peak around now, but three times she no-jumped, her second leap was a passable 6.61m but she could make no
improvement thereafter and finished sixth.
"I really can't concentrate on competitions with what is going on," she explained afterwards. "I'm very anxious and worried. I'm just waiting for a miracle to happen."
Meanwhile, Sotomayor was luxuriating in his return to big-time competition. With a large crowd now partaking in his pre-jump clap, he cleared his second attempt at 2.30m, an insignificant achievement by his standards but enough to beat the field. He then made no attempt to go any better; he was
tired, he explained, his will be a gradual return to the heights of his illustrious past. And anyway, only Vyacheslav Voronin, the Russian, has been jumping particularly well this season.
"The important thing was to win," he said. "I think I can jump 2.36m or 2.38m very soon." Would that be enough in Sydney? "I hope so."
And with that he returned to soak up the acclaim. A cavalry of cameras was directed at him. This was the way it was before; he was back.
Watching all this with some pride was Juantorena. He spoke about the psychological damage that the doping scandal had brought on his friend and how he had nevertheless trained stoically throughout his wilderness year in preparation for the comeback. He also insisted that in Cuba, where he is a
hero, "people believe he is innocent".
Juantorena himself swore blind that Sotomayor was innocent, but you tended to get the impression that his acknowledgement of the truth is somewhat selective. He would not believe the established fact that Sotomayor had tested positive for cocaine a second time.
Furthermore, he insisted that there were no double-standards being employed here. On the one hand, he has stretched wide open a chink in the rule-book and appealed to the compassion of the IAAF to resurrect Sotomayor's career. On the other, he has followed the rule-book to the letter to prevent
Montalvo from competing in the Olympics.
"It's not a matter of generosity," he said. "It's a problem for the future: rich country buys an athlete. I'm willing to stop this. This policy will destroy third world sport."
And what of the athlete herself? "This is nothing against Montalvo. My personal feeling is to defend the athlete. But you must fulfil the law."
And so to Sydney. Sotomayor may well get a gold medal. Unless there is a breakthrough in the next few days, Montalvo will get as far from the Games as possible. The sad conclusion is that they are both headed in the wrong direction.
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