WORLD SPORTS SCENE : Cuba’s Preparations Get Favorable Marks

Upon checking into their village at the 1983 Pan American Games in Caracas, Venezuela, athletes received room keys. But the keys, for the most part, were irrelevant. Many of the rooms didn’t have doors.

Amid a recession, the Venezuelans were unable to complete construction of the village and other facilities before the Games began.

Some U.S. sports federations felt compelled to book the few available hotel rooms so that athletes could rest comfortably the night before competitions. Less wealthy federations in the United States and other countries were confined to a village that could have served as a set for “Arachnophobia.”

Now, Cuba, which will stage the 1991 Pan American Games in Havana and Santiago Aug. 3-18, is experiencing even worse economic difficulties.

The federations have scheduled a meeting for Dec. 1 in Chicago to discuss the situation, although it might be postponed until three former athletes--speed skater Michael Plant, swimmer Mary T. Meagher and weightlifter Bruce Wilhelm--return from a fact-finding mission to Cuba later next month.

“We’ve heard that there might be some potential problems,” said Plant, president of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Athletes Advisory Council.

But at a Pan American Sports Organization meeting next Saturday through Monday in Mexico City, PASO President Mario Vasquez Rana of Mexico is expected to give the Cubans a favorable report. Not always has he been completely upfront on this subject, diplomatically portraying the situation in a more positive light, but this time his assessment will be verified by the Canadians.

Promising was the word used by the Canadian Olympic Assn.’s technical director, Francisco Campo, to describe the Cubans’ preparations.

“We were worried because we had heard rumors, especially coming from the States, that the Games wouldn’t take place in Cuba,” said Campo, one of seven COA representatives who recently returned from a seven-day visit to Cuba.

“But after being there for a week, I can guarantee you that the Games will go on. This is going to be a lot better than Caracas.”

He said work is on schedule at all the major construction sites--the 30,000-seat main stadium for the opening ceremonies and track and field, the velodrome for cycling, the swimming and diving pools and the athletes’ village. The Cubans already have a baseball stadium and an indoor arena suitable for boxing, basketball, volleyball and gymnastics.

“We were able to see some of the apartments in the village that were already finished, and they were very nice,” Campo said. “The people who will be living in the apartments after the Games are building them. There’s a brigade of professional people--doctors, lawyers, engineers--who are making sure everything is done right because they eventually have to live there.”

Campo said the Cubans acknowledged that the country is not faring well economically, but insisted that the budget for two major events next year, a Communist Party Congress in Santiago and the Pan American Games, would be maintained.

“The only thing that might cause them to change their plans would be if their financial aid from the Soviet Union is further cut,” Campo said. “But the Cubans have a lot of pride. It’s important for them to show the rest of the region that they can organize a successful Games.”

The Cubans haven’t been counting on the $8.7 million in television rights fees they negotiated with ABC/Capital Cities. A federal court agreed earlier this year with the U.S. Treasury Department position that the agreement violates a trade embargo.

But a possible out-of-court settlement between the network and the Treasury Department might allow the Cubans to receive a portion of the money. Under the terms of the settlement, the Cubans would be paid a fee for production facilities and a satellite feed that would enable ABC and Turner Broadcasting to televise the Games live in the United States.

After unprecedented meetings between South African sports officials and their counterparts in other African nations this month, leaders emerged cautiously optimistic that South Africa will earn readmission to the Olympic family in the foreseeable future.

The meetings in Harare, Zimbabwe, closed, however, with the now-familiar caveat that the dismantling of apartheid is a non-negotiable condition for normalization of South Africa’s sports relations with the rest of the world.

“I felt that there was much motivation given to the minority (white) sports leaders,” said Sam Ramsamy, head of the London-based South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee.

“The situation is going to be constantly monitored. South African sports administrators will have to play a more prominent role in the dismantling of apartheid.”

Help from that front might come from South African politicians. Parliament, which reconvenes in February, is expected to strike down at least two more laws that serve as apartheid’s pillars.

A communique from the conference specified that South African participants will not be allowed back into international sports until apartheid is “completely eradicated” and South Africa’s segregated sports bodies are merged under non-racial banners.

The Assn. of National Olympic Committees of Africa established two committees charged with promoting and monitoring an end to apartheid in South African sports.

Continuing reforms should enable South Africans to compete in the 1992 Olympics, the South Africans say. Ramsamy doesn’t believe the South Africans will be embraced by the International Olympic Committee so quickly, but said they might be able to compete in some sports internationally by then.

Hardly satisfied with the meeting in Harare was the Afrikaans Beeld newspaper in South Africa.

“The meeting did not open any international sport doors for us,” the newspaper said in an editorial. “It showed a shameful lack of recognition for what the government had done to eradicate apartheid.”

A U.S. team finished fourth in the four-man bobsled competition at the first World Cup competition of the season this month in Calgary, Canada, but it wasn’t the more celebrated team that included hurdler Edwin Moses. A sled driven by Chuck Leonowicz had the third-fastest start and barely finished out of the medals.

The second U.S. sled, driven by Brian Shimer, was 18th but might have finished among the top 10 if two pushers competing in bobsledding for the first time, Moses and former softball player Bubba Womack, hadn’t slipped. A few days earlier, Moses and Shimer had finished eighth in the the two-man competition.

“Considering we have some pushers who had never been in a bobsled before this year, we’re very happy with a fourth place and an eighth place,” said Scott Eaton of the U.S. Bobsled Federation. “Our technique has to get better, but that’s going to come with experience.”

The team is training in Germany.

World Sports Notes

The last soccer game for East Germany’s national team is scheduled Nov. 21 in Leipzig against the World Cup champions from West Germany. But the German police federation is asking that the game be canceled because of a riot earlier this month after a club game in Leipzig, which was in East Germany. One fan was shot and killed by police. . . . Former East German swimmer Nils Rudolph’s world-best time of 24.39 seconds in the 50-meter butterfly is no fluke. He beat two former holders of the record, Matt Biondi and Tom Jager, in a race last summer in Santa Clara.

UCLA’s Billy Thompson is a candidate for college soccer’s most prestigious postseason honors, the Hermann Award and the Missouri Athletic Club’s player-of-the-year award.

Times staff writer Julie Cart contributed to this story.