Word: cuban
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...same carnival-like atmosphere. For a TV watcher, this spectacle makes for great viewing. Watch some javelin during the lull between 100-m heats. Cut away to the Aquatic Centre, where Fu Mingxia, triple gold medalist, will dive for China. Flip to a few rounds of the legendary Cuban heavyweight fighter Felix Savon. Here's Marion Jones--she wants to be the first woman to win five track-and-field golds in one Olympics--warming up for the long jump, but before she leaps you can thrill to Ian Thorpe--"Thorpedo"--Australia's 17-year-old swimming sensation. Then there...
...while keeping in place a system that is not unlike baseball's in assuring that the stars--the moneymakers--continue to appear clean. Shorter is resentful that, even when this system stumbles upon a cheater, hypocrisy rules at the end of the day. He says "it absolutely stinks" that Cuban high jumper Javier Sotomayor will compete in Sydney. The world-record holder tested positive for cocaine at last summer's Pan Am Games and was banned for two years by the International Amateur Athletic Federation. But in early August the federation, citing "exceptional circumstances" and a career with no previous...
...hype to call Felix Savon's boxing record Herculean: 266 wins, nine losses; six world amateur championships since 1986 and gold medals in the past two Olympics. You'd think a Cuban fighter who has owned the ring like that for the past 15 years could retire to a beach hammock with a tall glass of Havana Club and a Cohiba...
...Savon isn't merely a good boxer; he's a heavyweight, which in Cuba makes him the defender of a legacy. When the big men fight for Olympic gold, you can expect to see a Cuban in the ring. The legendary Teofilo Stevenson won three straight Olympic golds (1972, '76 and '80), and Savon is determined to join him in that exclusive corner...
...Most Cubans adore Felix--one reason that Fidel Castro tapped him to carry the Cuban flag at Sydney. Savon, from the rural town of San Vicente, is regarded by Cubans as a ninote (big boy), a gentle giant with a fierce family loyalty and a punishing work ethic. Savon's address is kept secret to thwart money-waving promoters like Don King. On flights, at hotels and around Havana, though, they find him. Yet he echoes Stevenson (and many Americans, for that matter) when he calls pro boxing "dirty and exploitive." "He is a real asset to Cuba," says Vice...