Inside Lines: Athletics - Fidel Castro demands recount

Fidel Castro, the world's oldest and longest-serving dictator, is not happy. Outraged that four of his athletes, including the high-jumper Javier Sotomayor, were tested positive for drugs at the recent Pan American Games, he has demanded they are given back their medals, and an IOC investigation is launched. He is so steamed up about it that he ordered, and personally appeared in, a two-day televised hearing on the Canadian tests that found steroids in three weightlifters and cocaine in Sotomayor. "It was all a colossal lie, an infamous and shameful lie, a criminal plundering of merits won through denial, tenacity, consecration and sacrifice," said Castro. His case is that multiple urine tests of the Cuban weightlifters conducted by Cuba four days after the Games and sent to three different laboratories in Europe all tested negative for the anabolic steroid Nandrolone. As for Sotomayor, Castro said the cocaine was introduced in something he drank shortly before taking his test. One must remember, however, that Fidel has been a fully paid-up assassi

nation phobic for forty years and probably suspects a spike in even the drinks he mixes himself.