The Olympic Medals of Fidel Castro

Editor's Note:As the world notes the death of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, journalist Miguel Hernandez offers his personal perspective of how Castro turned Cuba into an Olympic sport power. Hernandez, a journalist for nearly 40 years in Cuba, followed Castro and his sport activities for Cuban newspaper Granma as well as the Mexico newspaper chain owned by the late Mario Vazquez Rana. Hernandez left Cuba this year and now resides in Florida.

(ATR) Cuban sports have "a before and after" from Fidel Castro.

The statesman who died at age 90 on Nov. 25 was a decisive figure in turning Cuba into a prestigious country on the world sport map, despite its size and number of inhabitants.

Although well-known for his controversial decisions such as boycotting the Olympic Games in Los Angeles and Seoul, Castro is considered the main architect of sports development on the Caribbean island.

He transformed his adolescent passion into a state policy and in turn into an "ideological weapon". Medals from the Olympics,Pan American Games and world championships began to arrive like never before.

Between 1900 and 1960, Cuba had won five gold, four silver and three bronze medals at the Olympic Games. With the exception of silver in sailing in 1948, the remaining medals were won in fencing in 1900 and 1904.

With the investment of the government of Castro between 1964 and 2016, Cuba achieved 210 medals: 73 gold, 64 silver and 73 bronze in 15 sports, in spite of their absences in 1984 and 1988.

It was no longer a surprise to see Cuban athletes at the top of the podium, especially at the Barcelona 1992 Games where Cuba placed fifth in the overall medal table following their consecutive Olympic boycotts. Castro attended the Olympic opening ceremony at the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona.

Thanks to this policy, beginning at the Pan American Games in 1971 in Cali, Colombia, Cuba would ascend to second place in the continental games. In 1991, Cuba took advantage of its status as host country and displaced the United States at the top of the podium. It would take 44 years for Cuba to drop out of the top three in the medal table at the most recent Pan American Games in Toronto.

While Cuba became dominant in the multi-sport games of Central America and the Caribbean, it came to an end in 2002 when Castro decided not to send a delegation to San Salvador for "security reasons".

That decision may have been taken by the Commandante to avoid a massive flight of athletes encouraged by the government of Francisco Flores, president of El Salvador at the time. Beginning in 2000 at the Ibero-American Summit of heads of state in Panama City, Flores often called for Cuban athletes to flee the island.

In 2010, Cuba also abstained from the regional games in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico with the same argument. Cuba’s absence helped Mexico take the lead in the medal table and despite the Cuban no-shows, the Puerto Ricans described their event as "the best in history".

But the Castro was convinced that these absences would not harm major events in the Olympic cycle.

In order to realize his philosophy of "sport, people's rights," Castro created the National Institute of Sport, Physical Education and Recreation known as INDER, He then decreed the abolition of professional athletes.

Cubans would then become "State Athletes" funded by the state budget in the midst of the economic crisis that to a lesser or greater extent has always accompanied Cuban society.

The funds created high performance centers, school sports, national school games and youth sport. The strategy was aided by experts from the Soviet Union, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland and North Korea.

Until 1962, Cuba was the main Latin American country with presence in American professional sports and several of its fighters shone in Madison Square Garden. With the beginning of the "Castro era", many athletes who believed they were good enough to go pro fled to America, while others stayed to become coaches or competitors of the first national championships "of the Revolution" in baseball and boxing.

Basketball and baseball were Castro’s favorite sports, although during his baccalaureate in Havana, he also practiced athletics and soccer.

After the triumph of the revolution, Castro participated in nights of basketball with sports leaders and players of the national team. His appearances were also frequent in the main baseball stadium in Havana and he sometimes jumped on the field wearing his military uniform.

He also practiced swimming. In one of the frequent statements in the prelude to the Pan American Games in Havana in 1991, Fidel had told me about the many kilometers that each day he swam in the pool, but before I published his quote in the newspaper he asked for me to delete it.

"It seems that he does not want the enemy to know the smallest detail of his daily life." I thought to myself then.

And he liked boxing a lot, but from the stands. His favorite boxer was Teofilo Stevenson who dedicated his three Olympic gold medals to Castro. It is rumored that Castro came to speak with the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev so that he interceded before his fellow countryman – then The International Amateur Boxing Association president Nikolai Nikiforov-Denisov – sought to approve a fight against Muhammad Ali without Stevenson losing his amateur status.

In the end, Ali showed no interest in the dispute. Years later, already retired and afflicted by Parkinson's, Ali traveled to Havana twice where Castro received him as an old friend with a reception at the Palace of the Revolution.

Figures of world-class Cuban sports such as runners Alberto Juantorena and Ana Fidelia Quirot, jumper Javier Sotomayor, volleyball player Mireya Luis, among many others, were present in the posthumous tribute to Fidel Castro in the Plaza de la Revolución de la Habana this week. A scene where more than once the Cuban leader boasted of the successes achieved by Cuban sport thanks to his revolution.

Written by Miguel Hernandez and edited by Kevin Nutley.

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