CUBAN BOXERS `FEEL MORE INDEPENDENT' AFTER TIRING JOURNEY TO L.A.

Byline: Michael Fleeman Associated Press 

Security was tight at the training camp in Guadalajara, Mexico, where 12 members of the Cuban boxing team were preparing last month for this summer's Olympics in Atlanta.

In addition to two Cuban security men, Mexican federales patrolled the grounds. Athletes were allowed to leave for a nearby store or someone's house, but only under limited circumstances. They'd get a lecture about the dangers of talking to people on the outside.

``There was always a watchful eye,'' said boxer Ramon Garbey.

Not watchful enough. The 12-member team is down to 10.

Garbey, 25, perhaps the world's best boxer in his weight class, left the camp June 22 for a dinner with a friend and never came back.

Five days later, another boxer, Joel Casamayor, a gold medalist for Cuba at Barcelona in 1992, went for a walk to get a drink - and kept on walking.

The two left the Cuban camp independently, but with a shared goal: To escape Castro's communism and get political asylum in the United States. To their surprise, they were reunited in Tijuana, with a Los Angeles law firm pulling strings behind the scenes.

After a harrowing van ride through Tijuana, they crossed the border together at San Ysidro on Sunday, were detained for three days and, on Independence Day, spent their first full day in the United States.

They became the latest in a string of Cuban athletes who have defected. At the Central American and Caribbean Games in 1993 in Puerto Rico, more than 40 athletes and officials from Cuba's delegation deserted.

They left behind their families, their homes, their hopes of winning Olympic gold, all for the biggest prize of their careers: freedom. Their applications for asylum are pending. An immigration judge will consider their cases.

Friday, they were tired and still overwhelmed by the past frantic few weeks - and a great deal of uncertainty to come. But neither voiced even the slightest of regrets.

``I feel free now,'' Garbey said through an interpreter. ``I'm away from communism. I feel more independent.''

They have been boxers for almost as long as they can remember, Garbey starting at age 9, Casamayor at age 8. They both came from poor families and went through Cuba's regimented sports academies. Both had won national titles by the time they were 13.

As they grew older, they both grew increasingly frustrated with communism. Both refused to register for the youth party organization; both paid the price. They encountered ostracism, restrictions on their travel and other activities.

Garbey, a 175-pound light heavyweight with a powerful jaw and facial scars, said he was suspended from the national team in 1994 and was jailed for three months.

Casamayor, a 119-pound bantamweight who looks - and fights - like Sugar Ray Leonard, said that winning the gold brought few opportunities for him in Cuba, as long as he refused to register for the party. He said he got none of the special treatment, the cars, the money, the homes, afforded to other athletes.

``I didn't want any affiliation with the Communist Party,'' he said. ``I wasn't free to go where I wanted to go - all the restrictions. I finally realized I wasn't going to stay anymore.''

Both said they had long considered defecting. It was just a matter of time.

That time came last month at the Guadalajara training camp.

``The only thing I was afraid of,'' said Garbey, ``was they were going to catch me and take me back to Cuba and make me a prisoner.''

Casamayor was encouraged to leave by Garbey's flight.

``I was, in a way, very happy for him because I knew what he had gone through,'' Casamayor said.

As they worked their way up to Tijuana - neither was specific about details for fear of implicating Mexican friends - lawyers in Los Angeles made arrangements for them.

Frank Ronzio, whose Wilshire Boulevard firm specializes in immigration law, got word of the boxers' plight early on and worked with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to lay the groundwork for an asylum application.

Ronzio and another person from the firm, administrative director Al Rogers, met the boxers at a motel in Tijuana and interviewed them to determine if their stories - and identities - were true. Cuban officials had kept the boxers' identification papers.