Twelve U.S. Cyclists Leave Havana for Training in Homestead, Fla.

Twelve American cyclists have left the Pan American Games temporarily to go to a training site in Homestead, Fla., U.S. officials said.

The cyclists left Sunday after their competition and won’t return until this Sunday for their final competition.

The cyclists, like the U.S. men’s basketball team that left Tuesday for Miami, are being shuttled by planes ferrying U.S. athletes, coaches, officials and journalists to and from Havana.

U.S. chef de mission Evie Dennis said the decision was not “a good message” for the United States to send to the 38 other nations who have assembled here for the Games.

“I am sorry to be put in a position of telling the (Cuban) organizing committee we are not shuttling athletes, and we are. . . . I knew nothing about it. . . . It puts me in a very precarious position,” Dennis said.

However, USOC President Robert Helmick, reached at his Des Moines law office before he returns to Havana today, said the decision to leave the Games and train in Florida was left to the individual teams and sports, and that their choice “was consistent with the USOC’s announced policy allowing each team to make its own decision about when it would come to the Pan American Games, when it would leave and how it would spend its days off.”