A Hero of Cuban People : Alberto Juantorena, Legendary ‘Horse’, Is a True Believer

One of the seven telephones on Alberto Juantorena’s desk rang, but he wasn’t sure which one.

He let it ring three times, shrugged and lifted a receiver to his ear.

The ringing continued.

Juantorena tried again, picking the right phone the second time.

“It’s my wife,” he said, apologizing for the interruption to the half dozen or so American journalists interviewing him in his office.

When Juantorena finished the conversation with his wife, one reporter asked him why he needed seven telephones.

Juantorena laughed, admitting that only three of them were operating.

“I’m supposed to impress you,” he said.

Juantorena could always impress people. Twice he was track and field’s athlete of the year. In 1976 at Montreal, he became the only man ever to win the 400 meters and the 800 meters in an Olympics. A year later, he won both events in the World Cup at Dusseldorf, West Germany.

His 44.26 in the 400 meters was the fastest ever at sea level until last Sunday, when Ohio State’s Butch Reynolds ran a 44.09 in Columbus, Ohio. Only six men have faster times than Juantorena’s 1:43.44 in the 800.

No one else is ranked among the world’s fastest 30 in each event. Few others have even attempted such a demanding double. But Juantorena was blessed with speed and endurance, earning him the nickname el Caballo, the Horse.

“Who is more popular in Cuba, you or Teofilo Stevenson,” one of the journalists asked.

“Teofilo,” Juantorena said without hesitation, referring to the heavyweight boxer who has won three Olympic gold medals.

The journalists nodded.

“But,” Juantorena said, grinning, “Teofilo would say that I am.”

Teofilo probably would be right. He is trying to decide whether to continue as a boxer, but the people of his hometown, Las Tunas, have decided he is not a legislator. They recently voted him out of Cuba’s General Assembly.

Juantorena, meantime, retired from competition in 1984 and, at 36, is a vice president of the National Institute for Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER).

INDER’s offices are in a dome-shaped arena, which also serves as the gymnasium of the elite athletes’ training center, known as Ciudad Deportiva , Sports City.

The neon sign on the front of the arena read “ Listo para Vencer ,” Ready to Win. It’s the Cubans’ way of saying, “Just win, baby.”

American journalists were there last month for a news conference on Cuba’s participation in this summer’s Pan American Games at Indianapolis.

In the arena that afternoon, the Cuban women’s volleyball team, perhaps the world’s best, scrimmaged East Germany’s national team.

Above them, hanging from the ceiling, was a large portrait of South American revolutionary Che Guevara. A sign at one end of the arena read, “El Deporte es un Derecto Del Pueblo,” Sport is the Right of the People. It was signed, simply, Fidel.

Juantorena led the journalists on a long, brisk walk to his office on the other side of the building.

“This is how I train every day for the 400 meters,” he said.

Actually, he runs six miles a day. Even though he’s a bureaucrat, he still looks fit enough at 6 feet 2 inches and 185 pounds to challenge Sebastian Coe or Joaquim Cruz in the 800.

There are a few mementoes from his athletic career in the office, including a plaque from the Committee of the Friends of Cuba that reads: “To the dignified son and hero of the people of Cuba.”

But there are no pictures of himself or any other athletes on the walls. The only two pictures are of a young Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

Juantorena learned English in conversations he had over the years with athletes who speak it as a native language. Even though he said he can’t write a word of the language, he speaks it well. He also has a playful sense of humor. But he becomes serious when he talks about the 1959 revolution.

“I was born in Cuba, I will die in Cuba,” he said. “I love my country, I love my people, I love the system. I am a communist.”

Some Cuban athletes sound robotized when they make such pronouncements, but not Juantorena. He sounds committed.

He said that before the revolution, when he was a child in Santiago de Cuba, he and his brother and sister lived with their parents in a two-room house. He said his parents didn’t have jobs.

“Sometimes there was nothing to eat,” he said.

After the revolution, he said his father became a construction worker and his mother a Spanish teacher. They continued to live in a small house, but he said there was always food on the table. His life changed in other ways as well, he said.

“The revolution gave me an opportunity to practice sports and go to school,” he said. “Before the revolution, those things were open only to the wealthy.”

He said he was encouraged to participate in several sports until he was 14, when, because of his height, he was put in a special school for basketball players.

“I was very fast, and a very high jumper,” he said. “But, oh God,” he added, making a shooting motion, “very bad.”

When he was 20, Cuba’s track coaches finally convinced the basketball coaches that Juantorena’s future lay in running.

In one of his first 400-meter races, he ran 51.0 while wearing tennis shoes. By the end of the year, having earned spikes, he ran 48.2.

Recognizing his potential, Cuban officials turned him over to a Polish coach.

“At that time, we needed the support from coaches in Socialist countries to train in many sports,” Juantorena said. “Almost all of our coaches now are Cuban.”

One of Juantorena’s favorite stories is about how his Polish coach tricked him into running both the 400 and the 800 in the 1976 Olympics.

Already established as one of the world’s best 400-meter runners by 1976, Juantorena said he was disturbed when his coach began asking him to run 800 meters in meets leading to the Olympics.

“He said the 800 would improve my endurance for the 400 in Montreal.” Juantorena said.

When the coach finally told Juantorena he would enter the 400 and the 800 in Montreal, Juantorena said he told the coach: “No, hombre, no.”

“Don’t worry, you can do it,” the coach told him.

“Before the Games, I realized I had a chance to win the 400,” Juantorena said. “But the 800 was first. I was afraid I would lose the 800 and be too tired for the 400. I was nervous.”

But in only the fourth 800 final of his career, after two straight days of qualifying heats, Juantorena won in a world-record time of 1:43.5.

The next day, he had to run two qualifying heats for the 400. Then, after a welcomed day off, he won his second gold medal with a personal record of 44.26.

Including heats and finals in his two individual events and the 1,600-meter relay, he ran nine races in nine days.

“His was the greatest exhibition of speed and durability in Olympic history,” Cordner Nelson, British track and field expert, wrote in his book, “Track’s Greatest Champions.”

Juantorena was ranked as the best in the world in the 400 for four years between 1975 and 1978 and in the 800 for 1976 and 1977. But from 1979, various leg injuries, requiring five operations, prevented him from regaining his stature. He retired after the Socialist Bloc’s Friendship Games in 1984.

He still returns to the track occasionally to advise Roberto Hernandez, who has one of the world’s best times this year in the 400 with a 44.61. In his first indoor race, Hernandez, 20, was second to American Antonio McKay in the 400 at this year’s indoor World Championships in Indianapolis.

“I tell him to run up hills and in the sand on the beach to give his legs power, like I did,” Juantorena said.

He said he expects Hernandez to break his national record in the 400 within two years.

Asked whether Hernandez will attempt to double in the 400 and 800, Juantorena said: “No. Maybe somebody can do it, but I don’t know anyone.”

For his work as an administrator, Juantorena said, he earns 385 Cuban pesos ($292.60) a month and is provided a car, a Soviet-made Lada. He and his wife Yria, a former gymnast, live in a four-bedroom apartment that costs 36 Cuban pesos ($27.36) a month.

“There is a bedroom for each of my three children,” he said.

Since he had said earlier that he has two children, daughter Yrita, 12, and son Albertico, 9, the reporters were puzzled.

“One room for my son, one for my daughter and one for my medals and trophies,” he said, enjoying his joke.

Juantorena jokes often.

During a serious lecture the previous week by Dr. Cosme Ordonez about Cuba’s national health program, he mentioned that grandfather clubs had been established throughout the island to encourage senior citizens to participate in physical activities.

Juantorena interrupted, announcing that the grand champion among the senior citizens was a 110-year-old man who had 51 children by five wives.

“That’s 10.2 by each wife,” Juantorena said.

The audience joined Juantorena in laughter.

“Many of the grandfathers are not so strong,” the doctor said, resuming the lecture with a straight face.

“But,” he said, “they are trying to be.”

They are the real heroes of the people.