Cuban Olympic Champ Deserts

(ATR) Double Olympic champion Robeisy Ramírez is the latest boxer from Cuba to defect.

The flyweight gold medalist in at the Olympic Games in London and the bantamweight category in Rio de Janeiro, left the Cuban team during a training camp in Aguascalientes, Mexico last week.

Ramírez is the only double Olympic champion active in Cuban sport.

A note from INDER, the Cuban Institute of Sport, confirmed Ramírez's flight and said that now the Cuban boxing team to the Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla, Colombia starting July 19 has been reduced to seven athletes.

Although the INDER statement did not describe Ramírez as a "traitor", a term that the late President Fidel Castro liked to use when referring to exiled athletes, INDER said that Ramírez "turns his back on his commitment to the country, the delegation and his teammates".

There is still no word on the whereabouts of the 24-year-old fighter from Cienfuegos.

But it is speculated that he is likely to cross the border into the United States with the dream of triumph in professional boxing that has lured other Cuban boxers.

This is the second defection of a Cuban Olympic medalist boxer so far this year.

In March, Yosvani Argilagos, bronze medalist at Rio 2016 and double flyweight world champion, left the Cuban delegation in Tijuana, Mexico. He was participating in a qualifying tournament for the Barranquilla games.

Argilagos, 21, appeared days later in the United States. According to the Hispanic press in Miami, he was in talks to be represented by an agent to help launch a professional career.

So far, Argilagos has preferred to keep to a low profile in the U.S. after the cancellation of the longstanding "dry feet, feet wet" policy by President Barack Obama in January 2017. The policy allowedCubans who arrived in the United States without a visa to become permanent residents.

Just between last October and this May, the U.S. had denied entry at the Mexican border to more than 3,500 Cuban immigrants.

Today, all Cuban immigrants must arrive in the U.S. with legal documents, whether by sea, air or land. They can request political asylum under a "credible fear of returning to Cuba". But they wait for months in detention in the U.S without the certainty that the request will be approved.

The bleeding of Cuban Olympic boxing champions into the United States began in December 2006 in Venezuela.

The gold medalists of Athens 2004, Yan Bartelemí , Yuriorquis Gamboa and Odlanier Solís abandoned training with the Cuban national team in Caracas. They managed to reach Colombia, and then moved to Miami .

In 2009 alone, 15 Cuban boxers escaped to the U.S., most of them through Mexico.

That year Guillermo Rigondeaux, Olympic champion of Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 escaped to Miami.

Rigondeaux and his teammate, the amateur world champion Erislandy Lara, had attempted to flee during the Pan-American Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2007.

Discovered, they were returned to the island a week after the conclusion of the games in Brazil, and publicly "sentenced" by Fidel Castro, banned from boxing in Cuba.

Later they both left Cuba clandestinely and became professional boxers in the U.S.

After a five-year hiatus without defections, in 2014 Marcos Forestal disappeared in Salem, Massachusetts, where Cuba faced the U.S. in the quarterfinals of the World Series of Boxing.

The desertions have continued notwithstanding immigration reforms adopted by the Cuban government. Changes in Cuban law now allow athletes to keep all income from prizes for their international competitions.

The authorities have also given free rein to the hiring of Cuban athletes in foreign professional leagues with the exception of Major League Baseball due to the U.S. embargo.

In Cuba, boxing is considered the flagship Olympic sport. Of the 78 Olympic gold medals won by the Caribbean island in its Olympic history, 37 have come from boxing.

Reported by Miguel Hernandez.