Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Sport, money and politics

Sport these days is both high profile and high profit. Developed 
capitalist countries spend large amounts of money on developing selected 
athletes and teams as winners. Much less effort is put into making 
participation in sport part of the everyday life of ordinary people.

To add to their pool of top quality sportspeople, both as competitors and 
trainers, the wealthier capitalist countries have used their wealth to 
pillage the sporting talent of poorer countries, especially Third World and 
Eastern European countries.

This has the double advantage of simultaneously weakening the competition 
while building up the dominance of "the West". Where the Third World 
country is also socialist, like Cuba, then this program is pursued with 
redoubled vigour.

Ever since the 1952 Olympics, where the Soviet Union participated for the 
first time, large amounts of money have been spent by the West to disrupt 
and destabilise sporting teams from socialist countries.

Everything from bribes and lucrative job offers to sex and threats have 
been used to persuade socialist-country sports people to "defect".

Since the overthrow of socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, the 
resultant economic chaos has made it easy for the richer capitalist 
countries to enhance their own sporting strength by adding impoverished 
coaches and athletes from these countries.

Australia, Canada, France, Germany and of course the USA, have gleefully 
participated in this talent theft, not only from former and present 
socialist countries but from poor countries in general.

Most recently, the politically inspired talent scouts for Western "sport" 
have been active at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg.

They have been backed up by a sensation-seeking media more interested in 
encouraging desertions from the Cuban team than in reporting its 
considerable sports victories.

While national Canadian papers devoted space to openly speculating on which 
Cuban athletes might possibly desert — and detailing asylum mechanisms, to 
encourage them — the five gold medals won by Cuba's Erick Lspez didn't 
even rate a mention.

One newspaper actually had a competition — with the first prize a trip to 
Cuba! — to guess the correct number of deserters from the Cuban 
delegation. Presumably the prize was meant to be a gag.

At the best attended press conference to that date at the Winnipeg Games, 
the President of the Cuban Olympic Committee, Josi Ramsn Fernandez, 
denounced the atmosphere in which the Cuban athletes were obliged to 
perform.

From the moment they arrived, they were exposed to telephone calls and 
written or verbal messages inciting them to desert.

The perimeter of the Athletes' Village was "besieged" at night by talent 
scouts (fulfilling the role of provocateurs) with offers — sometimes in 
writing — for Cuban athletes to "turn professional" or otherwise accept a 
position outside Cuba.

These talent scouts were particularly active around the baseball stadium, 
where Cuba's team stood out in what is the country's national sport.

Here, profit and political motives merged: North American privately-owned 
professional baseball teams would pay real money to secure some of the 
Cuban ball players.

Special attention was consequently focussed on the baseball stadium. 
Counter-revolutionary "exiles" tried to disrupt Cuba's game against Canada 
with a noisy demonstration; one of them gained the field with a placard, 
but the Cuban team rallied against the obvious provocation and decisively 
outperformed the Canadians.

Experience from previous Olympic and world championship games shows that 
Western intelligence services don't leave these things to chance, utilising 
the services of emigre groups and even planting agents amongst the 
"hostesses" in the athletes' village, with instructions to "befriend" 
athletes from socialist countries and persuade them to "choose freedom".

No doubt there is a financial benefit as well.

Fernandez stated that at Winnipeg, "the profit motive concerning athletes 
is being combined with the political intentions of the Miami mafia. This is 
a sporting event, not a political one", he said. "We are appealing to 
common sense and fair play."

Cuba is a small, poor country. Nevertheless, it has sent hundreds of Cuban 
sports coaches to train athletes in Latin American and other Third World 
countries.

This has helped to develop the sporting prowess of those countries. Some of 
the Cuban coaches' trainees have done so well they have snatched medals 
from Cuba itself. "We accept this as part of our sports philosophy", says 
Fernandez.

Later in the Games, a massive media brouhaha broke out when Javier 
Sotomayor, the reigning world champion high jumper, tested positive for — 
of all unlikely things — cocaine. That Cuba's national sports hero was 
apparently a cocaine user was of course music to the capitalist media's 
ears.

The Cuban delegation vehemently denied the accusation, asserting that 
Sotomayor's food or drink must have been deliberately spiked.

He has had eight dope tests this year alone and more than 60 over the 
course of his career and there has never been a hint of drug use.

He faces a two-year ban which would deny him the chance to defend his title 
at the upcoming world championships and the Sydney Olympics.

The capitalist media might pooh-pooh the idea of sabotage but I for one 
wouldn't put it past them.