Cubans still the lords of the ring

By Patrick Vignal

BEIJING (Reuters) - Relying on their least-experienced squad in years after a spate of defections has not stopped Cuba from extending their dominance of Olympic boxing.

The powerhouse of the sport for decades, Cuba has placed eight of its 10 boxers in the Beijing semi-finals and is already certain to match the eight medals it brought home from the 2004 Athens Games.

"We can now tell people in Cuba that they can trust again in our team because even with defections and betrayal, Cuban boxing will never disappoint," Cuba coach Pedro Roque told reporters ahead of this weekend's medal bouts.

Such success was far from obvious before the Games started.

Cuba collected five golds, two silver and one bronze in Athens but none of its champions came here to defend their2 titles after four fled the country to turn professional and one retired.

After skipping last year's world championships in Chicago in fear of more defections, Cuba headed to Beijing with a young team untested at top level.

That did not stop nearly all of them from showing off their skills to beat some of the world's best.

"These kids are young but they have more than 10 years of experience," Roque said. "Cuba has a youth system through which our athletes start training when they are eight or 10. All of our boxers have been part of that system and competed in several youth championships."

Cuba, whose boxers are banned from turning professional and told to concentrate on serving the regime, have won 32 of their 64 Olympic titles in boxing and produced such great champions as Teofilo Stevenson and Felix Savon.

A seemingly endless breeding ground for natural talent, a proud tradition and a style perfectly suited to the electronic scoring system mean the second or even third-ranked Cuban in each weight class could be a medal contender at any major event.

Three-times Olympic heavyweight champion Stevenson, famous for having turned down lucrative offers from American promoters to remain faithful to Cuba, came to Beijing and likes what he has seen.

"The support from our people and the government has been very important," he said. "Despite not having a lot of resources and being blocked economically for almost half a century, we are still here, we are still fighting."

(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)