Sport in Cuba

Due to historical associations with the United States, many Cubans participate in sports which are popular in North America, rather than sports traditionally promoted in other Latin American nations. Baseball is by far the most popular; other popular sports and pastimes include boxing (Cuba is a dominant force in amateur boxing, consistently achieving high medal tallies in international competitions), volleyball, basketball, sailing and trekking.

Post Revolutionary Cuba prides itself on its success in sports. Fidel Castro expressed that sports should be “the right of the people,” not the right of the wealthy. He compared Pre-Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary Cuba by explaining that while before only the wealthy could enjoy sports, now everyone can enjoy sports. He also explains that talent in sport comes from hard work, and a strong will. These are not traits the naturally wealthy have; rather these are traits that working-class people have. In modern Cuban society, sport and physical education begin when a child is only 45 days old. The mothers are taught to exercise their children's limbs and massage their muscles to keep them healthy. Children are taught at a later age to play games that resemble physical exercise. These ideas were the basis for the modern sports program in Cuba, and clearly it is working. Considering that Cuba’s population is only around 11 million (around half the size of New York metro area), Cuba has a demanding 7.5 to 0.70 lead against the US in the number of sports medals won per million occupants.

In 1961, two years after the triumph of the Revolution, The National Institute of Sport, Physical Education, and Recreation (INDER) was created. This was the governing branch of all sport and recreation in Cuba. It developed all of the current sports and education programs in place today, including the EIDE, which is the program that finds the naturally talented young adults and gets them into sports oriented secondary schools. All first and secondary schools in Cuba teach sport and physical education as a compulsory subject. There are five sports taught in all standard secondary schools: track and field, basketball, baseball, gymnastics, and volleyball. The students who excel at a certain sport usually find themselves competing in the Cuban summer Junior Olympics which is where the EIDE sees their talent and recruits them to a specialized school that caters to just their sport.

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