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Dirty and ruthless political warfare was being waged
against our athletes and our country

PRESENTATION MADE BY DR. FIDEL CASTRO RUZ, PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA, AT A TV SPECIAL PROGRAM ON THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SPORTS MOVEMENT BROADCAST LIVE FROM THE CUBAN TELEVISION STUDIOS ON SEPTEMBER 2, 1999, "YEAR OF THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE TRIUMPH OF THE REVOLUTION"

Esteemed viewers,
Distinguished guests,

On August 9, upon the completion of the Pan-American Games in Winnipeg, the Cuban government, through the National Institute of Sports, Recreation and Physical Education (INDER), announced that it would undertake an in-depth investigation into the doping charges raised against two members of the Cuban national weightlifting team, who were penalized and stripped of the gold medals they had won.

The goal of the investigation would be to clarify whether this was yet another dirty trick played against our country, or whether there effectively was some anabolic substance present in the body of the aforementioned athletes. If that were the case, the investigation would also look into the cause of this presence and the responsibility of the coach, the doctor or the athletes themselves. Moreover, consistent with our known the line of conduct, the results of the ongoing investigation into the weightlifters who had been stripped of their medals would, without exception, be reported to the national and international public in due course.

That investigation, involving intensive efforts, is now concluded, and we will immediately proceed to fulfill our promise.

Given that the charges and sanctions against our athletes were closely linked to and served as the basis for a colossal campaign against the athletes themselves and against the Revolutionary sports movement, I will speak clearly and frankly not only about the members of our weightlifting team, but also about Javier Sotomayor --a world record holder, Olympic champion, world champion several times over, and one of the foremost figures in Cuban sports-- and about what happened with all of these athletes at the Pan-American Games in Winnipeg.

This is how it all began:

On August 2, 1999, ten days into the Pan-American Games, at 5:25 p.m., I was informed from my office that Christian Jiménez, vice president of INDER, had sent the following message, which I will quote word for word:

"Humberto (Rodríguez, president of INDER and head of the Cuban delegation in Winnipeg) called and asked me to pass on an urgent message to the Commander in Chief.

"Everything seems to indicate that as part of a maneuver, they are trying to link Javier Sotomayor to a doping problem. This has not been made public yet.

"For this reason, tomorrow, the director of the Sports Medicine Institute (Dr.Mario Granda), Dr. Alvarez Cambras, and Dr. Quintero (the track and field specialist) will be leaving for Montreal, where the laboratory in charge of these tests is located.

"Humberto suggests that if we could demonstrate that this is yet another maneuver, we should make this information public tomorrow in the form of a condemnation.

"Humberto feels that this is the biggest and most desperate of all the maneuvers ever staged against us.

"In any case, he thinks we should wait for tomorrow's contact to know the results and subsequently make them public."

According to the rules, such an information is not officially announced until the testing has been completed by the laboratory designated for this purpose with the urine samples contained in two bottles, A and B, marked with the athlete's code. In Sotomayor's case, the news, obviously leaked from the laboratory itself, immediately spread everywhere like wildfire as soon as the first sample was tested. On August 3, a France Press wire service dispatch reported from Winnipeg:

"The president of the PASO (Pan-American Sports Organization), Mario Vázquez Raña, refused to confirm on Tuesday if Cuban record holder Javier Sotomayor had tested positive in an initial doping test, but acknowledged the existence of a pending case and asked `our Cuban friends to be patients.'

"The bomb was dropped at the same press conference where Vázquez Raña announced the withdrawal of the gold medal from Dominican athlete Juana Arrendel, the Pan-American women's high jump champion.

"When directly asked whether `Javier Sotomayor had tested positive' in the first test, the president of the Pan-American Sports Organization, Vázquez Raña replied: `An athlete that is being studied tested positive. I cannot name names but you said it.'"

At that moment, pandemonium broke loose all over the printed press, radio and television media. The Council of State's Stenography Department collected a total of 277 pages of news reports, wire dispatches, articles and comments relating the presence of a large quantity of cocaine, according to the Montreal laboratory, in Javier Sotomayor's urine. They were all published in just six days, from August 3 to 9. And this was but an insignificant portion of what had been published around the world.

Except for the declarations made by his teammates and by people with many years of in-depth knowledge of this athlete's career, habits, and behavior, whose unsurpassed chain of victories and awe-inspiring records have earned him the admiration of children, young people and sports fans around the world, not a single one of the wire dispatches or news reports issued by any media expressed the slightest doubt on the transparency of the doping test process, the objectivity and infallibility of the test, and the absolute fairness of an implacable and unmovable summary trial, which destroyed the life, honor and glory of an extraordinary athlete in a matter of hours.

As a result, Sotomayor, a humble athlete who had turned down millionaire offers as well as his mother, his wife and children would be forced to contend for the rest of their lives with the stigma of a "hard addict" or a "heavy cocaine user," as he was shamelessly qualified by some of his executioners.

Our own people in Winnipeg, that is, the leaders and head technicians of the Cuban delegation were genuinely appalled. Amidst a hostile atmosphere of defamation and harassment unleashed against them from the very first day --unlike anything ever experienced before at a major international sporting event, and on the eve of the World Track and Field Championship in Seville and the upcoming Olympic Games in Sydney- an atmosphere that they steadfastly and courageously withstood until the end, they could never have even imagined such a blow against their most prestigious athlete.

Although they were all absolutely certain of the impossibility that Sotomayor could have committed such a misdeed, the process of collecting, coding, transporting and testing the samples, the complete secrecy surrounding the identity of the athlete providing the sample, the total integrity and incorruptible honesty of those who direct and participate in the process, were something untouchable and sacred that no one would have dreamed of doubting.

There were also rigorous, inviolable regulations in force although our comrades witnessed incessant violations of all the established norms and noted that the regulations were obeyed in the same way that traffic signals often are. What the laboratory said had always been the last word, a kind of dogma or revealed truth. And there was the sophisticated equipment demonstrating the presence of cocaine in the samples of Javier Sotomayor's real or alleged urine in the analysis of bottle B, a second, infallible and final testimony to the absolute truth.

No one had ever questioned the sacrosanct testimony of a laboratory. It was absolutely inconceivable, even when everyone was aware of the growing corruption and dishonesty that commercialism and mercantilism had brought to the world of sports. It seemed as if there were not, in fact, quite a number of possibilities of predetermining the contents of these samples, from the time the athletes check into the Olympic villa, where they ingest food and beverages that others prepare and serve to them, until the very moment when their urine is collected, handled, bottled, coded and transported to the laboratory, where there is even the possibility, judging by the irregularities seen in Montreal, of the sample being contaminated by a venal official who knows the identity of the providing athlete, having been informed by another equally venal official of the several who are privy to this secret, including the one who took the sample and filled out the first form with the athlete's personal data and the number assigned to the samples, and then passed that form on to his or her superiors.

I have been told that volunteers carried out this task in Canada. It does not take much of a memory to learn by heart a six-digit number; it would be easier than remembering the phone number of an attractive young girl in Havana. With a name as well known as that of Javier Sotomayor, if someone were to bribe the person taking the samples, he or she would not have to make much of an effort to remember the code number. In a matter of minutes, the name and code number could be in the hands of anyone willing to pay for this service. In all fairness, it would be more likely for the information to be provided by someone higher up in the hierarchy, someone who has access to the pertinent codes, and among these individuals there are some who are known to be corrupt.

There was disorganization. All members of the weightlifting team reported, and I quote, that "in Winnipeg during the notification of the doping test, after the competition, they were directly handed water and soft drinks in the warm-up area. This was not done in the testing area, nor were they allowed to choose a drink at random from a refrigerator," as established by the rules.

They also reported that "the doping tests carried out on the Cubans were always done in a specific room, different from the place where the rest of the foreign athletes were tested."

Carlos Hernández, a weightlifter in the 94 kilograms category, winner of the gold medal, said that "after drinking the beverage he was provided his blood pressure dropped."

All of the weightlifting trainers noted that "the Cuban athletes were tested in a separate room and were also obligated to drink their sometimes warm beverages in a previously determined separate area."

Despite the evident hostility, arbitrariness, irregularities and tricks that our delegation had to endure every day, our people did not consider the aforementioned theories. The equipment pointed to the presence of cocaine. Therefore, although Sotomayor never would have consciously taken this harmful, shameful substance, the results had to be justified. He had returned to Cuba just after the competition, so there was not even the possibility of immediately taking another urine sample; cocaine is said to disappear in a matter of days, almost hours. The competition had taken place on July 30. It was already the evening of August 3. The "experts" at the laboratory and the PASO Medical Commission stated with presumptuous and arrogant certainty that the athlete had ingested a high dose of cocaine two days before. A number of people have assured me that if he actually had ingested such a high dose, Sotomayor would not have even been able to get out of bed, much less jump the 2.30 meters without touching the bar on the first attempt.

It is easy to understand the bitterness and anguish felt by our delegation's leaders and technicians. They were convinced that this noble and prestigious athlete was innocent. He must have consumed some sort of infusion or tea. How could they know for sure? There was not even time to find out. The Commission was scheduled to meet the next morning for a decision. If there were no other alternative, they were prepared to sacrifice their honor and even their own lives to save the honor of Sotomayor and his right to continue competing, to participate in the World Track and Field Championship and end his colossal sports career with victory in Sydney. They remembered that in Atlanta, or somewhere else, the authorities had been benevolent towards distinguished athletes accused of doping, if some banal and harmless explanation could be found, like that of a medication or a tea bag.

That same August 3, at 10:30 p.m., they communicated their viewpoints to the illustrious president of the PASO Medical Commission, Dr. Eduardo de Rose, who had seemed concerned, understanding and friendly. Later, he would go on to attack Sotomayor and our technical personnel before the mass media with vulgar insults and sarcastic jokes. The gesture and motives of our technical team, whose influence and prestige were pivotal in the decision adopted, were altruistic, selfless and generous. For that reason, it hurts me to have to make this criticism.

However, at that point in time, they forgot that in Winnipeg they were not dealing with honorable people, that a dirty and ruthless political warfare was being waged against our athletes and our country, and that we could not take on this battle with tactics like these. They forgot that it was not a matter of technical arguments and justifications. What I will relate later on would be worthless if we do not have the courage to admit our own mistakes and make them public.

PART II