Cuba in the past five Olympics
By
Manuel Alberto Ramy
On
Aug. 23, the Beijing Olympic Games ended with a closing ceremony that
may have been too long. The Games were magnificent, because of the
quality shown by the athletes in competition, the records set, the
pleasant surprises given by Jamaica, the Panamanian Saladino and my
compatriot Dayron Robles.
Beijing
can feel proud of its Olympic event, but maybe not about the final
cost, which was reportedly around $40 billion. Was it the costliest?
Probably. But the figure compels us to think in several directions.
The essential one: the change in sports, from an activity that shapes
personalities and serves as legitimate recreation and healthful
competition to a phenomenon of great commercial heft, which, inserted
into economic-commercial…
By
Manuel Alberto Ramy Read Spanish Version
On
Aug. 23, the Beijing Olympic Games ended with a closing ceremony that
may have been too long. The Games were magnificent, because of the
quality shown by the athletes in competition, the records set, the
pleasant surprises given by Jamaica, the Panamanian Saladino and my
compatriot Dayron Robles.
Beijing
can feel proud of its Olympic event, but maybe not about the final
cost, which was reportedly around $40 billion. Was it the costliest?
Probably. But the figure compels us to think in several directions.
The essential one: the change in sports, from an activity that shapes
personalities and serves as legitimate recreation and healthful
competition to a phenomenon of great commercial heft, which, inserted
into economic-commercial interests, limits the legitimate aspiration
of most countries to become the site of future Games.
For
example, could Jamaica (which won six gold medals this month) invest
in an ever more costly infrastructure? Would it be honest and
politically correct to derail resources intended for indispensable
needs toward the construction of special race tracks or Olympic
pools?
Even
Cuba, which in almost 50 years has made a heavy investment in sports,
should reconsider its whole policy in sports by concentrating on
events in which we excel and where we already have adequate
resources, and should lean more toward the view of sports as
recreation. Have we forgotten that INDER stands for National
Institute of Sports and Recreation?
How
expensive is it to shape high-performance athletes? I think we should
look at ourselves in the light of costs/results and the national
economic reality. The mass promotion of sports, a reality of ours, is
already extremely successful; so are our achievements in health or in
the development of state-of-the-art science and the development of
new pharmaceuticals.
Returning
to the Beijing Olympics, I feel obliged to point out the irregularity
of some referees, especially in boxing, where Cubans competed. There
was a most obvious partiality in the assignation of points, such as
giving the opponent a point for a blow struck by the Cuban. I mention
only one case because many news media, when stressing the
antisporting and censurable kick given by Valodia to the referee (see
my blog on the incident), tried to cover up the connivance between
the taekwondo judge and dark interests foreign to the sport.
To
lose fairly, as happened in baseball, or because of below-par
performance, as happened in volleyball against the U.S. and against
China for the bronze medal, is hurtful, but can be assimilated.
Cheating cannot.
Several
readers have asked me to rate the performance of the island’s
delegation. To satisfy them, I list the accomplishments of my
compatriots in the past five Olympic Games. The data are most
objective.
OLYMPIC
MEDALS WON BY CUBA SINCE 1992
|
|
Gold |
Silver |
Bronze |
Total |
|
Barcelona |
14 |
6 |
11 |
31 |
|
Atlanta |
9 |
8 |
8 |
25 |
|
Sydney |
11 |
11 |
7 |
29 |
|
Athens |
9 |
7 |
11 |
27 |
|
Beijing |
2 |
11 |
11 |
24 |
From Progreso Semanal
