By Xinhua
Havana : Cuba has cancelled plans to compete at the boxing world championships in Chicago to avoid possible disgrace, the Cuban Boxing Federation announced.
“Schemers and traffickers” will do all they can to convince Cuban fighters to leave the national team, as occurred in the Pan-American Games in Rio de Janeiro, the Federation said in a statement Wednesday.
Olympic boxers Erislandy Lara and Guillermo Rigondeaux fled the national boxing team during July’s Pan-American Games in Rio at the urging of German boxing promoter Ahmet Oner. They returned home in disgrace in early August, deported by Brazil police for visa violations.
“We will not expose a Cuban boxing team to the outrages and provocations which would be instigated in Chicago,” the statement said.
President Fidel Castro had hinted in a newspaper column soon after the Brazil fiasco that Cuban boxers may not take part in the Beijing Olympics at all.
The Oct 17-Nov 3 world championships serve as a qualifying tournament for Olympic Games with all eight quarter-finalists in each weight category making the grade.
There will two other opportunities for Cuba’s boxers to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.