Heeding Castro's defection fears, Cuba to skip boxing worlds in Chicago

Yahoo! News. By Will Weissert.

HAVANA, 29 (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."