GRANMA INTERNACIONAL DIGITAL

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On August 4, at approximately 11:00 a.m., the following information was received at the Council of State offices:

"At the meeting of the PASO Doping Control Commission and the PASO Executive Committee that has just concluded, the decision was made to withdraw Sotomayor's gold medal, with the doctors assuming responsibility for his ingestion of Peruvian tea (digestive tea)." In other words, they were assuming medical responsibility for his having ingested Peruvian tea.

"At 4:00 p.m. (Winnipeg time, 5:00 p.m. in Cuba), there will be a press conference where this measure will be made public by PASO.

"Later, Dr. Granda, director of the Sports Medicine Institute and Dr. Alvarez Cambras, director of the Frank País Orthopedic Hospital Complex, will also give a press conference to rescue Sotomayor's image and make it clear that he is not at fault.

"Discussions at the meeting were extremely heated.

"Because Canada had won two silver medals in this sport (through a tie), those will now become two gold medals.

"Humberto insists that this must be an enemy maneuver considering Sotomayor's experience and the fact that he has undergone over 15 such tests over the last eight months.

"Humberto wants us to pass this information on to the Commander in Chief."

This decision was made on the night of August 3 without consultations. It is true that at 6:00 p.m. that day, we had left for the Matanzas ceremony commemorating the attack on the Moncada Garrison, which began at 8:00 p.m. and ended in the early hours of morning. Because I had spent that entire day, from the morning onwards, reviewing the materials for the speech I planned to give, I did not even have time for breakfast. There was no chance for any communication throughout the day.

What had happened in Winnipeg? Our delegation received confirmation of the results of sample B at 7:30 p.m. (Winnipeg time), and when they met with famous Dr. de Rose at 10:00 p.m. (Winnipeg time), the ceremony in Matanzas was still several hours short of ending. We arrived back in Havana shortly after dawn on August 4, and had to quickly choose an excerpt from the speech in Matanzas for immediate release to the foreign press. It was not until the afternoon that we were able to attend to the reports coming from Canada.

In addition to the aforementioned message on August 4, we were informed that at 5:00 p.m. Winnipeg time (6:00 p.m. in Cuba), the techncal group would be giving a press conference. They were consulting us on whether to abide by the line adopted in the morning at the meeting with the PASO Doping Control Commission. It was not until almost 5:00 p.m. (Cuban time) that we were able to attend to the news coming from the Pan-American Games. At that time, I quickly read the message referring to the morning meeting with the PASO Committee and the line pursued. I also had to urgently respond to their request for advice on the line to be followed at the press conference.

To better understand the instructions I sent, I should explain the following:

At the request of our comrades in Winnipeg, on August 3 at 2:30 a.m. Christian visited Sotomayor at his home, located at the Playa municipality in Havana City. There were already numerous foreign journalists with cameras and television equipment set up in the vicinity, stalking the athlete. They had been there for hours --notice how quickly they moved-- having arrived before the end of the day on August 2, long before the press conference at which the PASO president was asked if Javier Sotomayor's first sample had tested positive. The news was already vox populi in Winnipeg, but also among the foreign press in Havana.

Sotomayor was already aware of rumors that he was guilty of doping, but he could not have imagined the accusation of cocaine consumption when he amply cleared 2.30 meters in a single jump, as he had done over 300 times throughout his brilliant career. When Christian told him that the laboratory test indicated the presence of cocaine, the scene turned dramatic: Sotomayor burst into tears of indignation and anger. When Christian asked him if he had drunk any sort of hot infusion or tea, Sotomayor categorically responded that he had consumed neither cocaine nor any infusion or tea to which such a result could be attributed.

Everyone who knows Sotomayor describes him as an extremely humble person, who never hesitates to recognize a mistake, a failure or lack of discipline in training, no matter how slight, when indicated to him. He is also an athlete obsessively cautious about anything he ingests, to the point of systematically refusing to take vitamins or medicine. He was not prepared to accept it, no matter what the consequences might be.

While the comrades in Winnipeg unable to consult him were trying to find an explanation, figuring out and even admitting a strategy that would benefit him in the apparently irreversible situation created by the staggering result of the Canadian laboratory, Sotomayor honorably denied having ingested any infusion or tea. Christian, an exceptional witness to this hard, traumatic and bitter moment, who did not doubt the integrity of the popular and respected athlete, was profoundly impressed by the sincerity and dignity of his reaction.

The tactic adopted for the morning meeting with the PASO Doping Control Commission had obviously been very wrong.

At 5:23 p.m. on August 4, I managed to contact Humberto, who was anxiously awaiting a reply, just 37 minutes away of the technical group's press conference. These are the essential points I made to him:

"You cannot elaborate theories that will damage his honor.

"We cannot be seeking for technical solutions to the problem.

"It must be explained that he categorically denies the charges, that he is an honest man and has been one all his life, that we believe in him. In short: we must support his claim because he is a man who has never committed a wrongdoing or shown a serious lack of discipline, and his principal trait is honesty.

"You cannot let yourselves get carried away by your desire for him to be allowed to continue competing. He has cried over this in indignation.

"We cannot impose him the tea story because we would be questioning his honesty and supporting an unfair charge.

"In the light of everything that has happened there, who knows how they managed to come up with this result, which is also a blow to the country's prestige.

"Deny it all. Our claim should be based on the true fact that he is an honest man, an honorable man, who has never been guilty of a serious lack of discipline.

"We must not waver in this regard. A result like this must be challenged. Do not waver for even a second.

"Tests like these cannot be trusted, in view of all of the underhanded tricks they have played, much less so when they have concocted charges of cocaine use, something which discredits not only the athlete but also Cuba.

"We must defend him; this is the moment when we must defend him and trust him more than ever. Do not accept even the remotest possibility that he might have done this. We must trust him because we know him well. We have a thousand reasons to trust him."

Humberto fully agreed with this stance.

Minutes later, I managed to contact Fernández. I spoke with him for a few minutes stressing similar points:

"This is an outrage. Among the many things that have happened, we see this as one of the greatest injustices committed there.

"To speak of cocaine is obnoxious.

"We have trusted him throughout his life because of his conduct. We cannot doubt him or question him now. By seeking a technical solution to counteract the decision made we would be questioning his prestige and his honor. I do believe in him, Fernández."

To which Fernández replied: "I believe in him, too, and we must make it clear that we believe in him, we believe in his innocence."

What was most infuriating about the Javier Sotomayor case was that he was being stripped of his gold medal through charges of consuming a drug with such a volatile presence that there was no possibility whatsoever of using scientific means to irrefutably prove the fraud. The only possible alternative was to wage a moral battle based on the life, history and profound, intimate knowledge of the athlete's personal traits and his behavior throughout an extraordinary career in sports.

We had a totally legitimate right to trust him, a man of humble origins, selfless, loved and admired by our people and by all those who have met him or have had any contact with him abroad.

He was awarded tens of thousands of dollars with the Prince of Asturias Prize in 1993, during the most difficult stage of the special period, and he donated it all to the country. I know this very well because he handed the donation over to me personally. He was only 26 years old at the time and was already a world record holder. To turn down his offer so that he could instead use this money, which he did not steal from anyone, to help his modest household, his poor and self-sacrificing family, would have offended him. It was extremely difficult to have him accept part of those funds without hurting or offending him. We could not abandon him now to the odious machinery of commercialization and advertising, which devours human beings and has corrupted and debased sports.

Why should we have more confidence in the disorganized and indiscreet laboratory run by the host country? That host country, which expected to displace Cuba from the second place she occupied definitively and irreplaceably. It should not be forgotten that his medal, together with those won by another ten heroes in this sport, had removed the United States from the first place in one of its strongest disciplines. By snatching Sotomayor's medal, they were also stripping us of this honor.

Why should we have more confidence in the organizers who were not even capable of guaranteeing respect and physical safety for the members of our delegation?

Why should we have more confidence in a medical commission whose representative heaped insults on our glorious athlete and shamelessly mocked and insulted our delegation with the press?

But there is an essential meaningful difference between stripping Sotomayor of his gold medal and stripping our two weightlifters of theirs.

The stripping of Sotomayor's medal was accompanied by a destructive and slanderous charge. He was accused before the world of being a drug addict, with absolutely no consideration for the fact that he had previously undergone over 100 doping tests, many of them carried out by surprise, where the slightest trace of drugs or anabolic steroids was never found. This is a fact that attests to his immaculate and irreproachable sporting background.

The weightlifters were charged with the use of an anabolic steroid, nandrolone, regularly used in professional sports but censurable, inadmissible and deserving of exemplary punishment in amateur athletes. Although the moral damage involved is considerable, it does not permanently destroy a young athlete, his honor and his family's honor, with an indelible social stigma that will forever emerge alongside his athletic feats.

In the case of Javier Sotomayor, they could not be unaware that his record, so far unbeatable, would be associated today, tomorrow and forever with the hateful claim that he was a drug addict.

Moreover, in the case of the weightlifters, they were charged with the presence in their urine of a substance that can only have the desired effect when injected muscularly and which remains in the athlete's system and can be detected up to six months later. This was what the well-known "experts" in Winnipeg affirmed when they condemned the weightlifters.

When I received the news on August 6 that they had found nandrolone in the laboratory tests of weightlifter William Vargas, I immediately thought that it was another case of fraud to support the hateful charge against Sotomayor and strengthen the credibility of the accusations against the unsurpassable high jumper and the prestige of Cuban sports.

I asked Christian to locate the weightlifter that very same day, to make an appointment with him at his INDER office to talk with him, listen to his points of view and then communicate to him, as tactfully as possible, the need to immediately take urine samples so as to spare him from a potential injustice. I asked him to immediately locate the weightlifting team doctor and the athlete's trainer as well.

The weightlifter, who had not returned yet, arrived in the early morning hours of August 7. He lives in the municipality of Caimito, in the Havana province and his wife had given birth to a son on the same day he won the gold medal. Once he was located, however, that fact did not stop him from heading to the INDER headquarters to provide the samples late that night, a task he completed in the early hours of the following morning. Only four days had passed since the time the samples were taken from him in Winnipeg.

PART III