By Xinhua
Havana : Cuba’s Olympic Committee is considering all its options, including not sending a boxing team to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, after two boxers fled the team in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro and returned home in disgrace, Cuban president Fidel Castro wrote in a newspaper column.
“Sporting authorities are considering all the possibilities including changing the list of boxers or not sending any delegation at all,” Castro wrote in Wednesday’s Cuban state daily Granma.
Erislandy Lara and Guillermo Rigondeaux jumped ship from the Cuban boxing team at the Pan American Games held in Rio last month, at the urging of German boxing promoter Ahmet Oner.
Castro, citing Spanish news agency EFE, said the two had spent their time getting drunk with prostitutes, bankrolled by Oner.
The news agency said last week that police had arrested the boxers for overstaying their visas, and they had then shamefacedly asked to return home, claiming they had been drugged by the promoter.
Once back in Cuba, according to Castro, “the revolution kept its word: reuniting them with their families, giving them access to the press and giving them jobs in line with their education. We have given equal attention to their state of health.”
Castro judged 24-year-old Lara, captain of the Cuban boxing team, more guilty of the two.
Despite his more responsible role “he delivered himself directly into the hands of the mercenaries”, Castro said.
Rigondeaux is a two-time Olympic bantamweight champion and Lara the amateur welterweight world champion.
Castro, who turns 81 Monday, has not been seen in public for more than a year. In late July last year, he handed over power to his younger brother Raul Castro, Cuba’s defence minister, before he underwent an operation for gastric bleeding.
He writes regularly in the nation’s newspapers on current affairs.