Olympics

(07-08-2012 23:01 )mr williams Wrote:  

(07-08-2012 22:41 )malicious fan Wrote:  o rite so he did want to but he wasnt allowed?

He probably did but if you said or did anything against the official line you would very quickly lose your privileges and could even be branded as "subversive"....which was not good for your prospects!

As a hero of Socialism he would have had a much higher standard of living and, of course, would have been allowed to travel abroad to fight in competitions - something which was unheard of for ordinary citizens.

Many people just made the best of a bad lot.

I'm afraid this version of events is not true. Stevenson had many offers to turn professional, including being offered huge purses to fight Muhammad Ali. However, he simply chose not to, preferring to stay loyal to the Cuban regime - Fidel Castro was a close friend of his. He definitely did not want to turn professional and that was his own choice. It wasn't a bad lot for him and he wouldn't have been a problem for him to turn professional if he had wanted to, except that he would no doubt have had to leave Cuba if he had done so. He was guaranteed residence in the USA if he wanted it, but by his own choice he wanted to remain in Cuba. “I don’t believe in professionalism, only in revolution,” he told one interviewer. “I tell these men from America, these promoters, that money means nothing to me. What is a million dollars against eight million Cubans who love me?” Sports Illustrated subsequently ran the headline: “He’d Rather Be Red Than Rich.”

brilliant moment with laura trott this morning, she was being interviewed on bbc breakfast and they showed a pic of her when she was 12 with bradley wiggins and she went bright red bless her

womens hockey semi final later 2nite! cum on gb

glad for lynsey sharp to get thru to the next round of the 800 metres! obviously selecting her after not getting the A standard and not being able to take our more experienced faster runners has put alot of pressure on her! hope she can get thru to the final and if its a slow run race, she has got a pretty quick finish!

(07-08-2012 23:25 )manic street pugilist Wrote:  I'm afraid this version of events is not true.

I don't want to get into a drawn out off-topic debate but I think you've missed the point I was trying to make. Yes, Stevenson was offered the chance to fight Ali and yes, he might well have genuinely turned it down due to loyalty to the Castro regime, but the point I was making was that he couldn't have said anything different even if he'd wanted to. If the Cuban authorities had thought that there was even a 1% chance of him taking up the offer he would have been prevented from leaving the country ever again.

It's all well and good saying he would have been given guaranteed residence in the US but if he had defected he would never have seen his family again and had to consider the terrible reprisals they would have suffered.

(08-08-2012 11:38 )mr williams Wrote:  if he had defected he would never have seen his family again and had to consider the terrible reprisals they would have suffered.

Well many Cuban boxers have gone and turned professional without their families suffering any reprisals, both in Stevenson's era and beyond. Cuba's failure to win any boxing golds in the 2008 Olympics for example was blamed on 4 of their gold medallists from the 2004 Olympics having defected. In the last 2 years alone 27 Cuban athletes from various sports have defected to turn professional, so if their families are suffering reprisals it doesn't seem to be stopping anyone.

But you're talking about the past decade - in the 1970s things were very different and far more brutal.

Go Katie Taylor

Nicola adams in the gold medal bout

Katie Taylor guaranteed a silver medal