BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 10 : Quickest to the Punch : Cuba Begins Training Boxers at an Early Age, and the Result Has Been a Dominance of the Sport at the Amateur Level

It is one of the amazing stories in international sports: how a country of about 10.2 million can dominate a sport, competing against countries with populations of 200, 300 and 500 million.

Cuba has skipped the last three Olympics for political reasons, but it hasn’t missed any World Championships in boxing, which is the same kind of international competition as the Olympics.

At the 1991 World Championships in Sydney, Cuba won 19 medals--gold in four of the 12 weight classes. The Commonwealth of Independent States had 13 medals, Bulgaria 10, Germany nine and the United States six.

In the five World Championships since 1982, Cuba has won 18 gold medals, the U.S. eight.

And Cuba has won 12 Olympic boxing gold medals since 1964, its first Olympics, despite the three absences. In the same period, the United States won 20 and skipped only one Olympics. Nine of those U.S. golds were won in 1984, when Cuba and the Eastern Bloc nations boycotted, creating a weak Olympic tournament.

At the strongest boxing tournament ever held in the United States, the 1986 World Championships at Reno, Nev., Cuba won seven of the 12 gold medals.

How do the Cubans do it?

Raul Villanueva, head of the Cuba Boxing Federation, answered the question bluntly.

“Because our government supports us,” he said.

Villanueva also said any small nation wanting help in developing a boxing program need only fax the Cuban Ministry of Sports.

Ten Olympic boxing teams here, including Spain, have Cuban coaches.

“We have 4,000 boxing trainers in Cuba, and 36 of them are working in foreign countries,” Villanueva said.

“And 45% of our boxing trainers have university degrees. We have 16,000 boxers, from school-age boys to university-age boxers.”

The prototype Cuban boxers are clearly distinguishable from most others at an Olympic or World Championship tournament. They are tall and lean for their weight classes.

All set up in the classic, upright boxing stance common to turn-of-the-century American boxers or today’s Eastern European boxers.

They are hard hitters, but more important, they are defensively sound. Subtle signs of boxing excellence, such as blocking a punch with an in-turned shoulder, are common in Cuban boxers.

Most impressive of all, however, is their stamina. Few have ever seen a Cuban boxer tired late in a bout.

“If there’s a hallmark of typical, world-class Cuban boxers, it’s their physical condition,” said Jim Fox, executive director of USA Boxing.

“Unless he gets hit, you never see a Cuban running out of gas in the third round. The other thing is, they’re all cut from the same mold--they’re all broad across the shoulders, have lean legs and they’re all tall for their weight class--just like the East Germans.”

The Cuban and American amateur boxing systems differ markedly in almost every respect.

In the United States, about a year before each Olympics, several dozen amateur boxers rise through the Junior Olympics and open-class programs to compete at the national championship level. Those who win at that level wind up in the U.S. Olympic trials.

Making a U.S. Olympic team--and better yet, winning a gold medal--is the preferred way of turning pro in the United States.

For example, Oscar De La Hoya, the East Los Angeles lightweight, considered turning pro two years ago. But his adviser, Shelly Finkel, manager of pros Evander Holyfield and Pernell Whitaker, told him he couldn’t make much more than $1,000 for his first pro bout at the time, but could get $200,000 for his first pro match if he won an Olympic championship.

After an Olympics, most U.S. Olympic boxers turn pro, and another, entirely new class of younger amateurs rise to the next Olympic team.

Before the 1959 revolution, boxing and baseball already were major sports in Cuba. Cuban boxing tradition was strong in the 1930s, when Kid Chocolate of Havana was a world-class pro boxing in America.

Chocolate was retired and living in Cuba when the revolution came, and he was a familiar ringside figure at Cuban boxing events for decades, until he died several years ago.

In the 1950s, Cuban pros Kid Gavilan and Florentino Fernandez were headliners in America.

Today, the influence of pro boxing on young Cuban boxers is a distant memory. A world-class Cuban boxer stays on the varsity until he stops winning gold medals.

Candelario Duvergel, the Cuban former world amateur champion lightweight and light-welterweight who had been a world-class boxer for a decade, was disqualified at Sydney in the semifinals for a low blow against U.S. boxer Vernon Forrest.

The Cubans gave him one more chance to stay on the varsity.

In March, in a rematch at the World Championships Challenge at Tampa, Fla., Forrest beat Duvergel on a decision, 17-14. So it was no surprise when the Cuban team arrived here without him.

Cuba’s new face at light-welterweight is Hector Vinent, who joins five others here who haven’t been seen at a major competition before. The other new members of the Cuban varsity: Raul Gonzales, 112 pounds; Daniel Regalado, 119; Joel Casamayor, 125; Ariel Hernandez, 165, and Angel Espinoza, 178.

Over the years, the Cuban boxing teams have become more social in international tournaments, in marked contrast to years when Cuban coaches and boxers spoke to no outsiders.

Saturday night at the tournament here, Cuban world champion heavyweight Felix Savon sat in De La Hoya’s cheering section. On days he doesn’t box, Savon roams through the arena, happily signing autographs and trading pins.

So where do they put together these world-class boxing teams, year after year, decade after decade?

It’s a dilapidated, unpretentious compound on Havana’s outskirts.

Cuban athletes, as were Eastern Bloc athletes, are identified at an early age, measured and weighed and growth projections are made. A 12-year-old who is, say, exceptionally strong for his age, might be directed into a weight-training program. If he is exceptionally tall, he goes to basketball school.

And lean, tall, strong young men with exceptional hand speed might be funneled into a boxing program.

Teofilo Stevenson was a slow-footed teen-ager struggling in Cuba’s youth basketball program in the late 1960s.

But a visiting Soviet coach saw him one day and suggested the Cubans move the 6-foot-6 Stevenson into boxing.

He made his international debut at the 1971 Pan American Games, where he lost a decision to American heavyweight Duane Bobick. But by the following summer, Stevenson had acquired a right-handed punch that was the scourge of the sport for three Olympic Games.

He won gold medals in 1972, 1976 and 1980, and probably would have won a fourth in 1984 had Cuba not boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics.

When he won his final World Championship at Reno in 1986, he was 35.

In his prime, he was constantly questioned about how he felt about a possible match with Muhammad Ali, and in the mid-1970s, it almost came off. Pro promoter Bob Arum said he had reached agreement with the Cuban Olympic Committee for Stevenson and Ali to box in three-round exhibitions in three U.S. cities, with Stevenson’s share of the television-generated revenue going to the Cuban Olympic Committee.

“But when the Treasury Department found out what we were trying to do, that was the end of it,” Arum said. “We couldn’t get around the fact that it was a commercial venture with Cuba, and it was a violation of federal law.”

After he won his second gold medal at Montreal, Stevenson received a hero’s welcome in Havana. A Cuban sportswriter recalled some years ago that, several months after the 1976 Olympics, Stevenson went out for an early morning run along the Havana waterfront.

A few young boys were first to notice, and ran along with them. Then hundreds were running with him.

“After a few miles, there were thousands of boys running behind him, cheering,” the writer recalled.

Stevenson is in Badalona as part of the Cuban boxing delegation. He still is lean and trim, with only a suggestion of a paunch and a slight graying of the hair to betray the fact that he is 40.

At a news conference here, Stevenson--who said he works for the Cuban ministry of sports--was uncharacteristically chatty. Someone asked why, since he looked so fit, he isn’t still boxing. “Because I am fit for life,” he said, smiling.

“Sports should be no more than 10% or 15% of your life. I was 22 years in boxing. That was too much. But I quit at the right time, when I was still a champion.”

His last international appearance in the ring was at Reno, when he won his last title.

He said he had no regrets about being unable to box professionally.

“Professional boxers are exploited physically,” he said. “When they are finished, they are unable to live properly the rest of their lives. In Cuba, I have everything I need for the rest of my life.”

Of Cuba’s ability to consistently produce world-class boxing teams, he said: “Cuba is small, but any country can do it. In Cuba, athletes are prepared while they are still in their mothers’ wombs. Not just boxers, but for 35 sports.”

On Muhammad Ali’s affliction, Parkinson’s syndrome: “It makes me very sad. Anyone with any heart would feel sad for him. He was the world’s idol.”