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Jose Ramon Fernandez, president of the Cuban Olympic Committee.

“We’ll honor the principle of fair play with doping-free athletes,” said Jose Ramon Fernandez, president of the Cuban Olympic Committee, in an exclusive interview with Excellences magazine.

Known simply as “El Gallego Fernandez” (Fernandez the Galician), for being a Spanish descendant, the leader of Cuba’s Olympic Movement juggles this responsibility with many other tasks within the Cuban Government: Vice President of the Council of Ministers is one of them. But this is the job that really brings up all the passion he has inside and takes a considerable chunk of his time and dreams. The dialogue below proves this assertion right.

What have been the main tasks the Cuban Olympic Committee has undertaken in this so-called Olympic cycle? We’ve homed in our efforts on enhancing cooperation with all national and international institutions with a view to raise the quality of sport activities and guarantee massive participation and turnout of all citizens, without any kind of discrimination whatsoever. In short, to let everybody practice sports and allow the best athletes –in keeping with their willingness, their skills and possibilities- to move up the ladder all the way to the top of the sports elite and to be the champs of Central American, Pan Am, world and grand prix competitions.

Another major objective has been the Olympiads of Cuban Sports in 2002 and 2004. We’ve also tried to strengthen sport ties with other countries, with their national Olympic committees, and we’ve paid plenty of heed to friendly collaboration in order to help less developed nations advance in the realm of sports.

I should also tell you how much the tug of war for the host of the 2012 Olympic Games actually meant to us. Now the IOC decided to leave Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, Leipzig and Havana out of the race and go ahead with Madrid, Paris, London, Moscow and New York.

How do you assess that first IOC ruling? Unfortunately, the basis of this race among all potential host cities is wrong from the word go. As long as these are the presentation cards you have to wield –thousands of cars, tens of thousands of five-star hotel rooms, the amount of money you have to build Caesar-style stadiums and venues- we won’t stand a chance. As long as IOC authorities disregard sport merits, downplay the pure Olympic and friendly spirit, the fact that sport activities are within everybody’s reach, and as long as the sport culture of a people is not taken account of, the healthy practice of doping-free sports, and the organizing ability of a country like Cuba, that has repeatedly shown what it can actually do in that respect, then the cities of the dozen or so richest nations of the world will continue getting all the attention.

In a word, as long as marketing practices and the interests of huge international corporations that sponsor the Olympic Games prevail, the current trend will remain unchanged. Rather than showing off the logo of an international corporation, athletes should be the true symbols of the Olympic Games, sportsmen with their sweat-soaked jerseys on going for the gold in fair competition. That should be the real symbol for the youth of a country and for the whole wide world.

Will Cuba give up on its effort to hold the Olympic Games? We’ll never give up on any effort to stand up for a fair idea. Cuba is not only defending its stance in this issue. There’re other countries that do not belong to that elite of rich nations, but they do have sports merits of their own to host the Games.

What are Cuba’s expectations in Athens? As usual, Cuba will take its finest athletes to Athens and with those athletes we hope to improve our position, I mean, to finish among the top ten countries out of 202 Olympic Committees competing there.

We’ll honor the principle of fair play with doping-free athletes. We’ll be going to Athens with these righteous goals in mind and with the intention of competing in a spirit of friendliness and goodwill. We don’t see athletes from other countries as our foes, whether we end up beating them or being defeated by them. They’ll always be adversaries on the field, but they’ll be friendly men and women off the field, human beings with ideals of their own on and off the field, people we can work with for a better world.

How do you assess the contribution made by the Olympiads of Cuban Sports? We held the II Olympiad of Cuban Sports this year. The first took place in 2002. They are good, in the first place, for our own sportsmen to compete among themselves, hone their skills and improve their performance at a national level. The Cuban Games are also a way of showing our people’s organizing capabilities. We have simultaneous competitions in a number of sports in different provinces, with television and press coverage, transportation and lodging needs to meet, food requirements, anti-doping tests to perform, as in any world-class tournament. That’s a nationwide sport party far from any kind of wicked recreation and that has no intention whatsoever to replace any national or international competition.