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Honor is worth more than life,
life without honor has no meaning

• Fidel's closing remarks during the special program on the national and international sports movement

FIDEL CASTRO WHEN I instructed the head of our sports delegation in Winnipeg and the president of the Cuban Olympic Committee to trust in the honor and the word of one of the great figures of world sports, I was not defending a gold medal or the prowess of having attained first place in track and field by beating the United States, a victory which was ignominiously snatched from us by depriving him of his medal; I was trying to save a man's moral standing.

An Olympic athlete is not a crude instrument of international prestige, an object that can be bought and sold on the market, a piece of merchandise that is used and then thrown away; above all, he is a human being with a mother and a father, a wife and a child, brothers and sisters, friends, admirers, proud of the recognition earned through his own efforts and outstanding merits. He has honor, above all honor. A person who never competed for money, who competed and won solely for honor. Honor is worth more than life, life without honor has no meaning.

There is a crime more reprehensible than a physical crime. The moral crime of accusing Sotomayor of being -a drug addict, an habitual user of cocaine, a product that is currently terrorizing the world, is to stain forever a man's life without real proof, without any guarantee whatsoever, without the slightest possibility of self-defense, without any possible appeal. Twenty-one years of total and selfless dedication to amateur sports, starting at 10 years of age, are destroyed in 48 hours.

One cannot arbitrarily and brutally ignore the fact that, on over 100 occasions, he passed programmed or random anti-doping controls, and that there had been over 300 times when he had exceeded the height that won him the medal in one single jump on that day. Even the most mediocre of courts and judges administering penal justice in the world would have taken into account the history and background of the person on trial before them.

If the world sports movement cannot offer that minimal guarantee to athletes competing in international events, there is an evident need to eradicate such procedures and replace them with others that are more humane, rational and just. Amateur athletes who are not competing for money cannot continue living under such a reign of terror.

Everyone will be looking at the case of Sotomayor, against whom an atrocious crime has been committed, a repugnant and opprobrious moral assassination, as occurred a little more than a century ago in the famous case of Dreyfus, that French officer who, because of racial prejudice and hatred was unjustly accused of spying and was punished and sent off to French Guiana, where the worst criminals were consigned, until there was no alternative other than to vindicate him. If the monstrous, arbitrary and unjust sanction imposed on this glorious, modest and altruistic athlete is not rectified as soon as possible, Javier Sotomayor will become the Dreyfus of this century that is coming to an end.

When, based on this conviction, we unhesitatingly affirmed his innocence, we never dreamed that a wave of unjust sanctions two days later-an attempt to ban the Cuban weightlifting team from the Olympic movement, based on charges against three of its members of using nandrolone-would result in us discovering and totally exposing the monstrous conspiracy orchestrated in Winnipeg against athletes representing Cuba.

Our evidence is irrefutable. Everything that has been detailed here: the solid scientific, theoretic and practical arguments by the director of the Sports Medicine Institute; those of the weightlifting team's brilliant and talented young doctor; and those of the experienced commissioner of this discipline. Taken together and presented with all the relevant documentation, these constitute such irrefutable proof that any one of them would be sufficient to persuade an impartial court. The overwhelming and irrefutable test results from three prestigious laboratories associated with the Olympic movement, two of them responsible in the last eight years for analyzing the samples from the Olympics and a world track and field championship, demonstrated the gross injustices committed against Cuban athletes. What happened a few days later during the World Amateur Boxing Championships was the last straw.

In the name of the Cuban people, we are asking Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, the maximum authority in the world sports movement, and a person in whom we have every confidence, to set up a commission to investigate the events that took place in Winnipeg and in Houston.

We have already demanded that the International Amateur Boxing Association undertake a review of the decisions which deprived five Cuban athletes of gold medals, as occurred that same night with the scandalous decision of corrupt judges in the fight between Juan Hernández Sierra and Russian Timor Gaidalov.

We demand the return of their gold medals, cleanly won and denied them by means of criminal and cynical procedures, to world high jump record holder Javier Sotomayor, weightlifters William Vargas in the 62-kilogram category and Rolando Delgado in the 69-kilogram category; and of the silver medal won by Modesto Sánchez in the 105-plus kilogram category. And what is far more important: the return of their honor to the offended athletes. We shall not rest until we have achieved that. If necessary, we shall take this to the courts, in order to file charges for the defamation and slander of our athletes.

We will also support them in any claim for compensation for human and moral damages they may decide to make.

The injustices they are suffering and the inequalities preventing the sports development, as well as the victories that are the right of Third World countries, are more than proven.

With all urgency, we intend to establish a modern and efficient anti-doping laboratory which will cooperate whenever required with the countries in our region in the same way as we do in the field of medicine, in which we are also a force. In addition to contributing to sports development with the cooperation of Cuban specialists, we are seriously considering the creation of a Latin American and Caribbean Physical Education and Sports School for the training of specialists to promote this noble and healthy activity in their countries of origin.

Some day, we Indians in frock coats will show what we are and what we can do.

Thank you very much.