Latest Cuban Export Comes in Many Sizes : Pan Am Games: With onetime overchieving sports programs in disarray, some of Caribbean island’s best coaches and athletes are leaving.

If Fidel Castro can dress in a blue pin-striped suit and tie and go to Paris to seek foreign investment, then it is hardly surprising to find Cuban sports officials here for the Pan American Games circulating business cards.

Their hearts and souls might still belong to the revolution, but everything else they have seems to be for sale--from the computerized results system in use here to coaches and even athletes.

In a sign of the severity of Cuba’s economic crisis, the Caribbean island’s national sports committee, INDER, has been forced to become financially self-supporting as the country tries to overcome food and equipment shortages, a reduced travel budget and defections of at least 70 top athletes and coaches since 1991 that jeopardize its status as an overachieving international sports marvel.

Letting the rest of the world know that they are open for business by talking about it--and talking and talking and talking--the Cubans are setting a Pan Am Games record for news conferences. More remarkable than how much they are saying, however, is what they are saying. They have been exhibiting unprecedented candor in discussing all aspects of their sports programs, even problems.

Two weeks ago, the assistant chief of Cuba’s delegation, Pedro Cabrera Isidron, surprised reporters when he said that INDER is alarmed about the use of banned performance-enhancing drugs by a small percentage of its 2,000 or so elite athletes. He then revealed that two boxers supposed to compete here were suspended after diuretics were recently discovered in their systems.

“We want the rest of the world to know how we think, and the only way we can do that is by becoming more open,” said Cabrera Isidron, verbalizing a directive that another member of the delegation, who did not want to be identified, said came from Raul Castro, the Cuban president’s brother.

That is a dramatic change from even earlier this year, when Jose Ramon Fernandez, head of the organizing committee for the 1991 Pan American Games in Havana, said that the priority placed on sports in Cuba protected its athletes from economic hard times and predicted they would equal their success of four years ago. Then, Cuba became the first country since the initial Pan Am Games in 1951 to finish ahead of the United States in gold medals, 140-130.

But although Cuban officials here said it is true that their athletes live better than average citizens, they quickly dispelled the idea that they might again challenge the United States. Their assessment has proved correct as, through the 13th day of the Games Thursday, the United States had 143 gold medals to second-place Cuba’s 78. The United States also had a commanding lead over the Cubans in the overall medal count, 354 to 172.

“The owner of the house always has an advantage,” Cuba’s sports minister, Reinaldo Gonzalez Lopez, said of the 1991 results. “There was patriotic fervor involved.”

Another factor this year, he said, is Cuba’s lack of depth. Instead of the 633 athletes it had in Havana, it has 490 competing here in eight fewer sports.

That is the result primarily of a travel budget reduced to $5 million for all events this year, compared to the $4.1 million that the U.S. Olympic Committee spent on the Pan Am Games alone.

The cuts have forced INDER to decrease the number of athletes it sends to virtually every competition, or, in some cases, withdraw from them altogether, a situation that some observers said could eventually affect Cuban performance, particularly at the developmental level.

“Sports there are becoming stagnant,” said Osvaldo Garcia, the former national water polo coach who defected last year to Miami. “And when sports are stagnant, there is less development of teams and athletes.”

Money is not the only necessity in short supply. U.S. weightlifting coaches said that the bodies of Cuban lifters here appeared less well-defined than in the past, and although they acknowledged that could have resulted from a crackdown by INDER against anabolic steroids, they said they believed it had more to do with nutritional deficiencies caused by food shortages.

“The food fluctuates,” Cuban weightlifter Rafael Gomez said. “Sometimes it is good. Sometimes it is bad.”

The same is true of equipment. Elite tennis players here said they use balls until they are worn, pass them on to second-tier players, who then pass them on to juniors. Cyclists said there are sometimes difficulties getting replacement parts for their bicycles.

Cuban officials publicly blame the trade embargo imposed by the United States, but one, who would not allow his name to be used, said a larger factor in sports is the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.

“They used to provide us with all of the equipment we needed,” he said. “Not only that, but we could send our athletes to those countries for free, use their training facilities, eat at their training tables, train and compete with them. Now, where do we turn? The United States? No. No one provides for Cuba but Cuba.”

They are attempting to achieve that by doing something that only a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable, renting out their athletes to other countries. There are baseball players in Japan, volleyball players in Italy and Japan and track and field athletes in Spain.

Even more valuable resources are Cuban coaches, about 500 of whom are working in more than 30 countries. Nine of the 42 countries competing here employ Cuban coaches, including the Argentine baseball team that won for the first time in the Pan Am Games since 1951 with a victory over the United States.

But Garcia said that the arrangements workbetter for INDER than it does for coaches. Offered a three-year contract to coach abroad, he declined after learning that 70% of his earnings would be attached by the Cuban government and that his family would have to remain in Cuba.

“If the government takes 70%, OK,” he said. “But when I asked them to let my family come with me because I would be a long time away from home, they never allowed me or other coaches to do that. They are so afraid of defections that this was their weapon to assure that you would return. They didn’t trust me. That was the worst thing, much worse than not having food. I couldn’t stay there anymore.”

Virtually every Cuban sport has lost coaches or athletes to defections, including 43 from the Central American and Caribbean Games in Puerto Rico in 1993.

Cubans here call the defectors deserters and said they give them little thought. An exception is weightlifter Pablo Lara, whose brother, Emilio, also a weightlifter, was among those who defected in Puerto Rico.

“He shamed my family because money was more important to him,” Pablo said. “But he’s still my brother.”

There did not appear to be extra security here surrounding Cuban athletes, who said they could come and go as they please.

“I can live and die in my country, or I can live and die in some other country,” heavyweight boxer Felix Savon said.

Through Tuesday, there were no confirmed defections.

“I can’t read the future, but I don’t expect any,” Cabrera Isidron said. “If there are, so be it. I feel more sorry for the countries they defect to than I do for us. They have to do all the paperwork.”