Cuba worried IOC will ring boxing’s final bell
Havana:olympicchampionin2016 and four times a world champion, Julio Cesar La Cruz has his eye on Tokyo 2020 glory.
That would take him one step closer to Cuba’s all-time boxing greats Felix Savon and Teofilo Stevenson, both three-time Games gold medalists, but La Cruz, who’s known as the shadow for his elusive brilliance, may never get that chance as boxing faces a fight to save its Olympic life.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has threatened to kick the sport, one of the competition’s oldest disciplines, out of the Games after IOC president Thomas Bach said he was “extremely worried about the governance of” amateur boxing governing body AIBA.
For Cuba, such a move would be a disaster as boxing is the one sport in which the island nation is a super-power, having won almost half of its 78 summer Olympic gold medals in the sport.
“That would be a very hard blow for the Cuban delegation if it could no longer count on its boxing titles,” said La Cruz, a 29-year-old with a mouth that sparkles from gold teeth.
With 37 Olympic titles and 73 world championship crowns, Cuba is the most successful nation in international boxing at what was once called the amateur level but in which many fighters now train full time.
Boosted by a unique ability to hold onto its biggest stars, such as Savon and Stevenson who were never seduced by the trappings of professionalism, Cuba has been able to dominate the amateur game for decades.
Cuban boxers were famously banned by iconic late president Fidel Castro from turning professional and fighting for personal wealth rather than their country’s benefit.
Some inevitably did defect, most recently double Olympic champion Robeisy Ramirez, who walked out of a training camp in Mexico in July.
The lure of professional spoils used to be the main threat to Cuba’s vast boxing pedigree, but now it comes from sport’s most prestigious governing body.
A scandal at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games saw the entire 36-member AIBA delegation of referees and officials suspended due to allegations of match-fixing, and things have only gone downhill since then for the sport.