Dominican trainers are rejecting the Dominican Olympic Committee whereby the government would pay Cuban professionals to train Dominican athletes. Coaches of baseball, basketball, boxing, volleyball and weightlifting rejected the plan whereby the government would pay RD$9,000 a month plus housing to the 57 Cuban pros that would come here to train top-notch Dominican athletes. The program was the result of the visit of the Dominican Olympic Committee to Cuba to secure the vote of Cuba for the Dominican aspirations to host the Pan American Games. The program would cost the state about RD$12 million a year. Ruddy Zapata, national boxing coach, said that Dominican coaches are poorly paid. He said that sports here are in disorder and that it makes no sense to spend large resources hiring Cubans to help unless the chaos is straightened out. He said that the state and the Dominican Olympic Committee should have carried out a study on the national sports situation, adding that there are coaches here who have worked their whole life in favor of sports, with countless limitations, making many sacrifices, and no one has taken them into account. Zapata also questioned the Cuban coaches training Dominican athletes to compete against their own athletes.
