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Cuba defends Sotomayor

Positive drug test described as a frameup

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Posted: Friday August 06, 1999 03:22 PM

Javier Sotomayor denies knowingly ingesting the cocaine that showed up on drug tests during the Pan Am Games. AP

HAVANA (AP) -- Cuba pledged Friday to defend the honor of high jumper Javier Sotomayor, charging that the positive drug tests that cost him his Pan Am gold medal were part of a larger campaign to discredit the communist government.

"The mud of Winnipeg will never make us dirty," the Communist Party daily Granma declared in an extensive front page story. "Cuban sports and the revolution will be strengthened by this shadowy episode of Winnipeg."

The Cuban government "will defend to the end the integrity and honor of Sotomayor and any other honest athlete like him," the article said.

Sotomayor denies knowingly ingesting the cocaine that showed up on drug tests during the games. Both he and Cuban authorities have suggested that his food or drink may have been laced with the drug.

But Pan Am medical officials have said all that matters is that the drug was in Sotomayor's urine. They said they don't question how it got there.

The Sotomayor case is the biggest drug scandal in track and field since Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was suspended and stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for an anabolic steroid at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

So far, Sotomayor has talked only to Cuba's government-controlled media.

Sotomayor declared his innocence in interviews published and broadcast Thursday by Cuba's government-controlled media, saying he had never seen cocaine in his life and that he didn't even take vitamins.

Sotomayor, the world indoor and outdoor record-holder and the only high jumper to clear 8 feet, won his fourth Pan Am gold in the high jump last Friday.

Following the drug test results, he was stripped of the medal and suspended for two years. That makes him ineligible for this month's World Track and Field Championships and next year's Olympic Games.

"The aggression against Sotomayor is an important link in the chain against Cuba and its sports that began with the start of the games," Granma said.

"This could come, surely it comes, from farther away, as part of the strategy that has been going on for decades to harm and discredit the Cuban Revolution."

Sotomayor was the third athlete -- all gold medalists -- to test positive at the games. Canada's in-line roller hockey team lost its gold medal after goalie Steve Vezina tested positive. The Dominican Republic's Juana Rosario Arrendel, the women's high-jump winner, lost her prize as well.

Sotomayor's urine sample showed a reading consistent with a person who uses cocaine, Pan Am medical chief Eduardo de Rose said.

Recreational drug use remains rare in Cuba, and is frowned upon by Fidel Castro's government, which considers it a negative byproduct of capitalism. But drug use has grown in recent years with an increase of tourism to the island nation.

The Cubans are expected to appeal the ruling.

 

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