Defections fail to puncture Cuban optimism

By Jeff Franks

HAVANA (Reuters) - Defections have cut through their highly rated boxing squad but if Cuban officials are worried about the strength of the national team heading for the Beijing Olympics, they are certainly not saying so.

At a ceremony for the baseball squad, President Raul Castro gave the defending Olympic champions a pep talk that sounded more like their marching orders.

"All of you know what the Cuban people expect of you, and you and we know that you are going to fully achieve it," he said at Havana's Latinamerican Stadium.

In Cuba, good athletes are spotted and nurtured from an early age under a Soviet-style sports system instituted after the 1959 revolution that put Fidel Castro, Raul's older brother, into power.

The children go to special sports schools and the best end up at one of the nation's two Centres for High Performance.

Fidel Castro regards sport, and Cuba's success in sports traditionally regarded as American strongholds, as a vital element in his political battle with the United States.

"Go forward in the spirit of victors as in Ayacucho and Mal Tiempo," he urged, in a reference to long-ago battles.

"With you goes our people's love for our country," he said in a hand-written note published on the front pages of the state-run press ahead of the Beijing Games.

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With a population of 11 million people, Cuba has won 170 Olympic medals, including 65 golds. India, with an estimated population of 1.1 billion, has won just four individual golds.

Athletes in Cuba remain poorly paid amateurs, however, and most of those who defect hope to turn professional. This year the baseball, soccer, judo and boxing teams have been hit by defections.

Cuba dominated boxing at the 2004 Athens Games, winning five gold medals. But none of the five winners is back because three defected and one was kicked off the squad after attempting to flee. The other, Mario Kindelan, retired.

These losses have left Cuba with a boxing team that is young, has no Olympic experience and is going up against one of the strongest fields in Olympic history, boxing coach Pedro Roque said before a recent tournament against French boxers.

"We have completely renovated the team," he told reporters in a sweltering Havana arena. "We can't talk at this moment about grand goals or compare them with the Athens team."

However, Roque said his team was talented and deep including 2005 world amateur lightweight champion Yordenis Ugas and five champions from the 2007 Pan-American Games.