BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 15 : Cuba Wins Four Out of Five : Boxing: The team’s only loser is welterweight Hernandez. It can win four more golds today.

Cuba won four gold medals Saturday and can win four more today, the final day of the Olympic Games.

Cubans won all but one of their five bouts, earning gold medals in the light-flyweight, bantamweight, middleweight and heavyweight classes as they improved their record here to 43-4. The only loser for Cuban Coach Alcides Sagarra was welterweight Juan Hernandez. He lost, 13-10, to Michael Carruth, Ireland’s first Olympic boxing champion.

Today, Cubans will fight in four of the six gold-medal bouts--in the flyweight, light-welterweight, light-middleweight and super-heavyweight classes.

The tournament’s first gold medalist was Cuba’s Rogelio Marcelo, whose task was made easier in the light-flyweight match by poor strategy on the part of Bulgaria’s Daniel Bojinov.

Marcelo challenged Bojinov early in the first round with rough tactics. Bojinov obliged, and before he could return to boxing, he had lost a 6-1 first round.

Bojinov went back to boxing in the last two rounds, but it was too late to catch up.

Wayne McCullough was the first Irishman to try for gold Saturday, in the bantamweight final, but he lost to Cuba’s Joel Casamayor.

Casamayor won the first round, 6-1, then accidentally thumbed McCullough early in the second. Casamayor had a 10-2 lead after two, but McCullough staged a whirlwind finish and made it close. McCullough, finishing with a bloody nose as well as a sore eye, rocked Casamayor three times in the final 10 seconds.

After Oscar De La Hoya beat Germany’s Marco Rudolph, Carruth made Irish boxing history.

Carruth, one of 10 children including triplet brothers, won by 13-10 after the bout was tied, 8-8, at the end of two rounds because of a referee’s warning to Carruth for holding. That added three points to Hernandez’s total.

But even Ireland’s first boxing gold had a Cuban connection. One of the Irish team’s coaches is a Cuban, on loan. In fact, Cuban coaches are on the staffs of 10 teams that competed here.

After Cuban Ariel Hernandez defeated American Chris Byrd, world champion Cuban heavyweight Felix Savon easily defeated Nigerian David Izonritei, 14-1.

Gold-Medal Bouts

TODAY

112 pounds--Raul Gonzalez (Cuba) vs. Su Choi Choum (North Korea)

125--Faustino Reyes (Spain) vs. Andreas Tews (Germany)

139--Hecto Vinent (Cuba) vs. Mark Leduc (Canada)

156--Juan Lemus (Cuba) vs. Orhan Delibas (Netherlands)

178--Rostislav Zaoulitchnyi (CIS) vs. Torsten May (Germany)

201+--Roberto Balado (Cuba) vs. Richard Igbineghu (Nigeria)