THE YEAR OF THE OLD SPORT : Cuba’s Teofilo Stevenson, 35, Still the King of Amateur Boxing

In a year when old is in, it’s only appropriate that amateur boxing’s world champion in the sport’s most prestigious weight class, the super-heavyweights, is not only the oldest of them all, but, at 35, still the best.

Cuba’s Teofilo Stevenson was a kid when he won a gold medal at the 1972 Olympic Games, a champion at the peak of his career when he did it again in 1976 and 1980. But when the Communist countries boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, the Stevenson era, nearly everyone agreed, was over. No fourth gold medal.

After all, by 1988, El Gigante would be 37. Forget it. Three gold medals, and that’s a wrap. No “Boxing’s Al Oerter” leads. Bring in the new. The legend was dead.

Actually, the belief that Stevenson had had it was strengthened well before the boycott was announced, in 1983. An an out-of-shape Stevenson was beaten at the North American Championships in Houston by a short-armed, fat American, Craig Payne. On that night, Stevenson looked 42, not 32.

That was the commonly held perception last May, when boxing teams from 37 countries assembled in Reno for the World Championships of amateur boxing. But when the 6-foot-6 Stevenson walked off the airplane with his teammates, there were double takes all around. Was he here to coach? To translate? Was the trip to Reno a gift, from a grateful Cuban boxing federation? He wasn’t here to . . . to box, was he?

You bet he was. Just watch:

BOUT ONE--Stevenson weighs in at 215, trimmer than he’d been for a major competition in a decade. He rolls to an easy 5-0 decision over an East German giant, Ulli Kaden, a look-alike for Ivan Drago, the Soviet boxer in “Rocky IV.”

BOUT TWO--The hammer is back. Stevenson reaches back a couple of decades for the fabled right hand of old and knocks Bulgarian Petar Stoimenov senseless, in two minutes flat.

BOUT THREE--In the semifinals, Stevenson meets a real Ivan Drago, Vycheslav Yakolev of the Soviet Union. Yakolev is 25, tall, strong and slow. Stevenson, 35, tall, strong and fast, shows superb movement and a superior jab and earns a 4-1 decision.

BOUT FOUR--Unbelievably, Stevenson is in the finals, fighting for a chance to win a second triple--three world championships to go with his three Olympic titles. His opponent is a promising but inexperienced American slugger from San Fernando, Alex Garcia, who had stopped three consecutive opponents. Suddenly, like so many Americans before him, there is Garcia--flat on his back, eyes glazed, wearing a slack-faced stare. Garcia got up, but Stevenson uses another shotgun right hand to send him reeling into the ropes, and the referee stops it.

Amazingly, Teofilo Stevenson was still the king of amateur boxing.

In the aftermath, a grinning Stevenson indicated that at 35 a guy can still fight, but he has to learn to use his head as much as his fists.

“I’m trying to be a more technically well-rounded boxer,” he said, through an interpreter, although he speaks English fairly well. “My right hand is as strong as ever. But if a boxer enters a ring thinking he will knock someone out, he has already lost part of the bout. It is like baseball: A hitter who tries to hit a home run every time is not efficient. Young athletes try to do everything by force because they are strong and it is easy. As athletes grow older, they learn and develop more technique.”

He also said there are 35-year-olds, and there are 35-year-olds.

“Biologically, all athletes are different,” he said. “Some athletes do well at a young age but lose their skills more quickly. Other athletes, as they grow older, lose skills at a much slower rate.”

Stevenson was including himself in the latter category, of course, and immediately was asked if he would possess enough skills by 1988 to allow him to compete in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. He smiled, winked, and wouldn’t answer the question. A Cuban boxing official would only say: “The Seoul Olympics are two years away--we will decide then, not now.”

U.S. boxing officials were amazed.

“I said four years ago I thought he’d beat Larry Holmes inside of four rounds, and I still think he’s the best heavyweight in the world, amateur or pro,” said Rolly Schwartz, longtime amateur boxing official. “In 45 years in boxing, I’ve never seen anyone hit with that kind of velocity.”

Flashback: 1972.

A few months after he’d won his first Olympic gold medal, Teofilo Stevenson was jogging along the Havana waterfront highway known as the Malecon. Near the spot where the U.S.S. Maine was blown up in 1898, some small Cuban children began accompanying Stevenson on his run.

At first, it was only a dozen or so. But by the time he reached the La Riviera Hotel, a roaring mob of thousands of children had joined Stevenson, in what turned out to be a spontaneous victory parade, but not one Stevenson had sought.

Frightened by the size of the throng, the 21-year-old Stevenson ran across the Malecon and into a building and peered through a window, until the children dispersed. When they’d left, he went home.

The incident illustrates the fact that in Cuba, Stevenson is a loner, a reluctant idol. Unlike another Cuban sports hero, Olympic champion runner Alberto Juantorena, Stevenson doesn’t mix well in crowds, and doesn’t enjoy speaking to more than two or three people at a time.

In 1983, when a U.S. boxing team competed in Havana and Stevenson couldn’t compete due to an injury, he wouldn’t sit a ringside. Instead, he watched the bouts from an arena tunnel, so as not to attract attention.

Said a Cuban translator, assigned to the U.S. team then: “Teofilo was our first great sports figure after the revolution. But he is a shy man, very private. He has never been as outgoing as some of our other champions.

“Juantorena, for example, is the opposite. He will go out of his way to meet with people. Teofilo is not like that, he is not accessible. He is not as educated at Juantorena, his Spanish isn’t as good, and many think that is the reason.”

Stevenson isn’t Cuban born. He was born in Jamaica in 1952. His parents were agricultural workers and moved to Cuba in the late 1950s. They settled in a small community in southern Cuba called Antonio Guiteras and went to work in a sugar mill called Central Delicias.

His father was raised on English-speaking St. Vincent and his five children grew up in Cuba speaking English in the home and Spanish in the neighborhood.

Curiously, it was a Soviet coach, not a Cuban, who steered the tall teen-ager into Cuba’s soon-to-be powerful boxing program. A visiting Soviet track coach, as legend has it, watched the long-armed, gangly Stevenson in a basketball game in the mid-1960s. He suggested to the Cubans that Stevenson be placed in a boxing program. You could say the rest is history, but the story may not be over yet.

Cuba’s national boxing coach, Alcides Sagarra, remembers first seeing Stevenson in a provincial tournament when Stevenson was 14.

“He was tall for his age, and very skinny, about 62 kilos (137 pounds),” he said. “He seemed very smart in the ring. I could see he had lots of talent, just by the way he moved around the ring.”

Sometime in the early 1970s, Stevenson discovered he could end bouts early with his right hand. Duane Bobick, America’s “Great White Hope” heavyweight of the period, won a decision over Stevenson at the 1971 Pan Am Games. But a year later, at the Munich Olympics, entering the ring with a 62-0 record, Bobick was savagely beaten by Stevenson.

In the years that followed, the result was roughly the same almost every time Stevenson met an American boxer. He always seemed too tall, too strong, too confident. Then, at last, he seemed too old. But he wasn’t too old, he was just too good.

The legend lives.