Castro threatens boxers with travel ban

Fidel Castro might bar Cuban boxers from competing in the world championships in the US and Beijing Olympics qualifying events to prevent possible defections.

Castro wrote in a column published in official newspapers that two Cuban boxers who disappeared during the Pan American Games in Brazil last month only to be arrested and sent back to the island “had reached the point of no return” with the national boxing team.

“The athlete who abandons his delegation is not unlike the soldier who abandons his fellow men in the midst of combat,” he said.

Guillermo Rigondeaux, Cuba’s top boxer and a two-time Olympic bantamweight champion, and Erislandy Lara, an amateur welterweight world champion, arrived in Cuba on Sunday. They were sent to state guest houses for more than two days, then released while the communist government decides what to do with them.

Castro said Cuban officials were compiling the list of fighters for the 2008 Olympics, a squad that was scheduled to compete in the amateur world championships in Chicago in October and two other qualifying events before heading to China.

“Just picture the mafia sharks lurking about in search of fresh meat,” Castro wrote of would-be promoters who could try to persuade Cuban fighters to desert.

He said Cuban sports officials hoping to prevent defections are “analysing all possible alternatives, including the option of changing the list of boxers or of not sending any delegation whatsoever, in spite of the penalties that may be in store for us”.

“Cuba will not sacrifice one bit of honour, nor any of its ideas, for Olympic gold medals,” Castro wrote. “The morale and patriotism of its athletes shall prevail above all else.”