Behind the Cuban Curtain - Tommy Kono (1967)

 Strength & Health February 1967

In 1958, Cuba had but 80 active weightlifters. Today they have 13,000 registered active weightlifters with a growing enrollment all the time. This is a tremendous amount of lifters when you consider the fact that Cuba has a population of less than 7 million people in an area slightly larger than South Carolina.

In the recent Central American Games held in San Juan, Puerto Rico in June of 1966, Cuba won the weightlifting team title by amassing 30 points, one point more than the favored home-town Puerto Rican squad. The well conditioned Cuban team won the team crown despite the fact that their ace heavyweight lifter Verona who had officially totaled over 1,100 was left behind in Cuba for disciplinary action (character building.)

I was especially interested in the training system used by the Cubans so when the chance came to have a brief chat with them prior to judging the middleweight class, I cornered their weightlifting coach Marcelino Del Frade and inquired about their present program for grooming top notch athletes. The story he related and later elaborated on by the delegate and President of the Cuban Weightlifting Federation David Mye at their room in the Olympic village was most enlightening and interesting. I gathered the following story from Del Frade and Moye and pass it on to the readers of Strength and Health magazine.

Cuba is methodically recruiting and developing more weightlifters with an eye toward dominating the sport in future Central American Games. Their long range program is to be able to match strength with the U.S. team and then aim higher for world and Olympic titles.

The campaign to recruit more lifters started in 1958 under the Castro regime. To discourage the immense interest in bodybuilding which did not help to improve the standard of weightlifting and was not developing any new lifters from its ranks, the government under Castro purchased all the gyms one way or another and retained the former owners to instruct ONLY weightlifting.

Between 1961 and 1962 Russia sent to Cuba a total of 250 Olympic sets as a good-will gift and to help encourage the sport. These sets were dispersed all over the island and competition in some type of lifts were held.

In the beginning lifts requiring very little skill were employed in these contests. Lifts such as Squat and Press, or Dead Lift and Jerks were used to interest young adults and teenagers. Gradually the supplementary lifts such as the Squat and Dead Lift were eliminated from the competitions and contests only on the three Olympic lifts were held.

In the meantime thousands of pamphlets on the Olympic lifts and about the sport of weightlifting were printed and distributed among the general public so all the people of Cuba would understand the sport. A “Big Push” was on to educate the Cuban public on the facts of weightlifting and to make it one of the national sports.

To stimulate more interest in the development of the sport and weightlifters the former Russian world’s heavyweight champion Alexi Medvedev spent a period of 3 months in Cuba in 1961 giving clinics and coaching budding future champs. Olympic and world champion Yuri Vlasov was especially flown in to Cuba from Moscow to give demonstrations and exhibitions in various parts of the island.

With the facilities available and the interest created the next step of the Master Plan was a very important one for the development of a powerful weightlifting team. The one important ingredient missing at this point was the availability of good, qualified instructors to groom the vast amount of lifters who were eager to learn the finer points of weightlifting.

The Cuban government, working within a strict budget, employed only a handful of weightlifting instructors and the remaining coaching staff was made up of volunteer instructors. Five of the more talented and knowledgeable men who were better informed about weightlifting techniques were sent to Russia to study under such former world champions and world record holders like Medvedev, Dr. Arcady Vorobiev, chief coach of the Soviet team, and Dr. Roman of the Russian Institute of Physical Education.

After 13 months of intensified schooling in the science of weightlifting in Tbilisi, a “hot bed” for the sport in the Soviet Union, the 5 Cubans of which one was Marcelino Del Frade returned to their native country to disseminate all the knowledge they had acquired to the other coaches and trainers in Cuba.

Through all this work the Cubans now boast of over 100 weightlifting gyms and have over 50 well qualified, full-time, paid weightlifting instructors… and, of course, 13,000 lifters. Because of the great demand and interest in the sport the gyms are also open 24 hours a day!

Despite the fact that weightlifting is enjoying great popularity in Cuba the number one sport is still baseball. But in general sports participation in this Caribbean island is fantastic. The athletic programs take part in municipal meets, then to one of the six regionals and finally to the national championships. The Cuban program for promoting sports run closely parallel to the Russian method in this respect.

In Cuba, as in Russia, there is no such thing as professional athletes. According to the Cuban track and field delegate Ricardo Perez their athletes are never hounded by scouts or tempted with big financial offers to turn professional therefore the athletes can concentrate on developing their potential to the fullest. They compete not for financial gains but because of the love for competition and sport.

One of the phases of their work program was finished with the success of winning the team title in weightlifting at the Central American Games. The next phase might very well be the team title in weightlifting at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg, Canada, next year.

With an army of 13,000 lifters to choose from and with some of the lifters on the Cuban team at the Central American Games only 20 years of age Cuba has a very solid foundation to build a strong weightlifting team which may threaten the solidarity which the U.S. now enjoys at the Pan American Games. Cuba has already begun planning to dominate the weightlifting event in the 1970 Central American Games which will be held in Panama.

One of the future plans which they mentioned to me was that of inviting some of the best weightlifters from the various countries in the Caribbean area to take part in a contest held on their island to give additional experience to their team. They also hope to have Leonard Zhabotinsky in Cuba for some weightlifting exhibitions.

If Cuba continues to support its weightlifting program they will eventually be a strong contender for some world titles and world records. They may eventually dominate the weightlifting scene on the western hemisphere. All this by an island with a populate of less than 7 million people.

Related to the Cuban system, this podcast with Arthur Chidlovski and Weightlifting House several years ago has a very nice breakdown of how the Soviet system worked for low and mid-level athletes.  Stuff like increased food allowance, etc... kind of set the table for incentives for the Communist bloc athletes. 

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/arthur-chidlovski-weightlifting-was-made-for-communists--43895154

Also, visit Arthur's site as it's a treasure trove of classic weightlifting information.

http://www.chidlovski.net/liftup/