Champs and chumps

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: An e-mail circulating in Jamaica states that international sporting authorities have banned cassava on the grounds that it is a performance-enhancing substance. This was a wry comment on the remarkable success of an island of only 2.7m people at the Beijing Olympic games. Jamaica won 11 medals, of which six were gold. In doing so, it knocked its bigger neighbour, Cuba, from its perch as the Caribbean’s sporting power. The Cubans returned home with just two golds, their worst showing since 1968.

What explains this reversal of fortune? In large part, who got to compete. All of Jamaica’s medals came on the track. The Champs, as Jamaica’s high-school athletics championship is called, is the country’s top sporting event, televised nationally and held in a big stadium. This may explain why Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man, was not coaxed into throwing his energy into basketball, cricket or football (though he has the physique to excel at the first two). More than genetics, it is this national specialisation which has allowed Jamaica to emerge as a track power.

Cuba spreads its talent more widely. Its Communist rulers have set great store by Olympic success as a symbol of political superiority. But it is boxing at which Cubans have long excelled. Whereas boxers elsewhere turn professional as they get older and better, Cuba’s state-sponsored “amateur” fighters remain eligible for the Olympics. When offered $1m to fight by Don King, an American boxing promoter, several Cuban champions are said to have replied that they would rather fight for 10m Cuban people.

In Beijing, Cuba’s boxers still managed eight medals (a third of the country’s respectable total haul of 24). But there were no golds. That may be because three of the five gold medallists in Cuba’s 2004 Olympic team have since defected; a fourth languishes in Havana, disgraced for trying to do the same. Because of official fears of more defections, the boxing team did not travel to the 2007 world championships, held in Chicago.

There is, however, another theory. According to Fidel Castro, who wrote an editorial on the subject last week, Cuban boxers were robbed by malicious referees. A Cuban Taekwondo fighter, Angel Matos, was banned for life, along with his trainer, when he delivered a vicious kick to the head of the referee who had just disqualified him for taking too long to get medical attention. Mr Castro declared himself in “total solidarity” with Mr Matos and his coach. So it’s official: Jamaica has eclipsed its island neighbour because of an imperialist plot.