Robles: Being Cuban cost me hurdles gold medal
HAVANA, Cuba (AP) — Cuban athlete Dayron Robles said he wouldn’t have been disqualified from the 110-meter hurdles at the world championships if he came from a more powerful country.
Robles was stripped of his first-place finish in the hurdles in South Korea on Monday after judges upheld an appeal claiming he held back Chinese runner Liu Xiang.
The ruling meant the gold medal was handed to American Jason Richardson, with Liu second and British athlete Andrew Turner bumped up to bronze.
“If I were from another country that had more power, that wouldn’t have happened,” Robles told The Associated Press in an email received Tuesday.
The South Korean track officials were lucky Robles did not take matters into his own hands (or feet) as another Castro athlete, Angel Matos, did in the Beijing Olympics when he kicked a referee in the mouth for disqualifying him.
just watched the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVcK5Ss5h5o and Robles clearly and intentionally grabbed the chinese runner’s hand not once but twice.
Just saw it again and in the slow motion you can see that not only did he make contact twice, he attempted to do it a couple of times before he was successful. Dirty bastard.
I’m sure that Raulita by now has found use for Matos’s skills against the Ladies in White.
And Robles is just another dirty, cheating athlete, the new man, product of the Robolution.
What do you expect. The “Robolution” has been the ultimate breeding ground for a carnivorous way of life.