Defections fail to puncture Cuban optimism

By Jeff Franks

HAVANA (Reuters) - Defections have cut through their highly rated boxing squad but if Cuban officials are worried about the strength of the national team heading for the Beijing Olympics, they are certainly not saying so.

At a ceremony for the baseball squad, President Raul Castro gave the defending Olympic champions a pep talk that sounded more like their marching orders.

"All of you know what the Cuban people expect of you, and you and we know that you are going to fully achieve it," he said at Havana's Latinamerican Stadium.

In Cuba, good athletes are spotted and nurtured from an early age under a Soviet-style sports system instituted after the 1959 revolution that put Fidel Castro, Raul's older brother, into power.

The children go to special sports schools and the best end up at one of the nation's two Centres for High Performance.

Fidel Castro regards sport, and Cuba's success in sports traditionally regarded as American strongholds, as a vital element in his political battle with the United States.

"Go forward in the spirit of victors as in Ayacucho and Mal Tiempo," he urged, in a reference to long-ago battles.

"With you goes our people's love for our country," he said in a hand-written note published on the front pages of the state-run press ahead of the Beijing Games.