HAVANA -- Fidel Castro might bar Cuban boxers from competing in the world championships in Chicago and other qualifying events leading to the Beijing Olympics to prevent possible defections.
Castro wrote in a column in official newspapers that two Cuban boxers who disappeared during the Pan American Games in Brazil last month, only to be arrested and sent back to the island, "had reached the point of no return" with the national boxing team.
"The athlete who abandons his delegation is not unlike the soldier who abandons his fellow men in the midst of combat," he said.
Guillermo Rigondeaux, a two-time Olympic bantamweight champion, and Erislandy Lara, a welterweight world champion, arrived Sunday in Cuba. They are being held in guest houses while the communist government decides what their new profession will be.
