That time with Fidel. The incredible story of Cuba’s offshore race.

Welcome to the special section “BAM 35 Years.” We are presenting “cult” articles from the Motor Boats archive, starting in 1990. A journey through time among stories unobtainable today, even in the great sea of the internet! A dive into the world of epic moments in motor boating. Let’s start with one of the stories we were most passionate about.

That time with Fidel

From Motor Boats 2009, November, pp. 72-79.

This also happened, the Líder Máximo kicked off the Havana Offshore GP. It was 1995. We tell you how it happened and all the background.

The “culprit,” if one can call it that, has a first and last name: Mauro Ravenna, who was promoter of the World Class 1 Offshore World Championship in the 1990s. But the sto- ria we want to recount transcends sport to become a real event of international politics, which, in fact, also had political repercussions, such as the easing of the embargo on Cuba by the countries of the European Union. It all began in 1994, as Ravenna recounts, “When I was approached by a Monegasque friend by a financial group to organize a race in Cuba, I immediately thought, ‘the usual visionaries who are going to waste my time.'” Indeed, it is quite intuitable how an organizer spends part of his time meeting with people of various backgrounds and nationalities, each with the project of a lifetime under his arm. Most of the time it all ends after the first meeting, and, frankly, this is what I expected from the meeting I was about to start as well.

Class 1 offshore GP in Cuba

The project seemed too ambitious to me, an offshore Class 1 GP in Cuba, with all the embargo problems, was a really tough challenge, but precisely because of that extraordinary. I won’t hide it, I have always been a right-winger, but the revolution of those young “barbudos” against a corrupt dictator, their battles for a more just world, had always aroused great sympathy and respect in me. There are things in life that remain and not even the paucity of our days can erase, there are acts of love and courage that should be recognized and admired. These were the thoughts swirling in my head as I waited for my interlocutors to reach the offices of Spes, Sport promotion et spectacle, my company. The reasons that had led these people to think about a race in Cuba were even more original.

Transferring from Miami to Cuba a fishing boat for the president of the Cuban sugar company, of which they were among the most important business partners, they had been fascinated by the beauty of the bay, and had thought of it as an ideal stage for a motorboat race. As was my custom, I was frank. To have a race in Cuba takes a lot of money: the offshore boats have to be ferried in a dedicated ship, and then the logistics on the race course I imagined would all have to be invented. To my surprise they were unfazed by those words, took note of everything, and we parted with the agreement that in August I would make an initial inspection of the island to see for myself the feasibility of the event. They were true to their word.

There was a major sponsor, the Spanish Tabacalera, which wanted to market the Montecristo cigarillo. The race was to be organized for the spring of the following year in order to have time to get the boats all the way to Cuba and then get them back for the continuation of the Championship. I arrived in Cuba just in the days when hundreds of “balzeros” aboard their patched-up inner tubes as best they could were taking off hoping to reach Florida. “Good start,” I thought. The Cuban government was proposing two sites for the event: either Varadero or Marina Hemingway, both a few miles from Havana.

I visited and failed them both, the first being a tourist resort, with beautiful beaches but no particular charm to justify an intercontinental trip; the second was in a state of partial neglect, somewhat sad and cold, and on the far outskirts of Havana. These were the first two things I brought back to Osmany Cienfuegos, brother of revolutionary hero Camillo Cienfuegos, then Minister of Tourism and one of Fidel Castro’s most listened to and important collaborators, when the first official meeting with local authorities took place.

Immediately, however, I also made an alternative proposal. The night before I had left my room at the Hotel Nacional, Havana’s most famous hotel, I had walked along the waterfront to the Morro Fortress. I am a history buff, and history itself tells us that a legendary automobile Grand Prix had been run on the Malecon waterfront for years. It was retracing an important page of sports and motoring history, it was an opportunity to create an event in the heart of the city and have a large audience: “if you authorize me to organize a race on the Malecon I will bring you a million spectators” was my promise. For the record it was later one and a half million.

Then the pilots had to be convinced….

It was not difficult to convince Cienfuegos, just a glance was enough; if anything, his misgivings stemmed from the possibility of convincing pilots from various not-quite “friendly” nations to accept the trip. Suffice it to say that Team Victory in Dubai had almost half of its pilots and technicians from the United States. So, for my part I was very concerned about the proverbial bureaucracy of communist regimes. We looked each other in the eye and promised each other that he and I would be the only interlocutors. A handshake sealed the deal and a lifelong friendship. In April 1995, everything was ready for the “Montecristo Cup, La Habana-Cuba.” It was no small feat because it was one of the periods when the U.S. and European blockade towards Cuba was very strict, later it was loosened especially by the European Union, and I want to think that it was also my event that helped this détente process.

Fidel’s arrival

Fidel Castro’s presence at the start was the most complex request I had made, but no response had been given. Thereafter, in the days immediately preceding the race, there was a kind of ballet of regularly unfulfilled announcements: breafing, rehearsals, pre-race party, but no one showed up. By now I despaired of meeting the Líder Máximo. On the morning of the race, at eight o’clock, I was reached by a phone call from Colonel Joselito, the Comandante’s head of security, announcing Fidel Castro’s presence at twelve o’clock on the starter boat for the start. He asked me to take the necessary materials (flags and smoke bombs) for inspection, report to the port for arrangements without talking to anyone. So I did. He asked me how the start was to be made, I explained that the starter boat was a 100-knot offshore (it was in fact Stefano Casiraghi’s former Cuv monohull) that flanked the line-up of competitors to line them up and launch them, so it could not be escorted by patrol boats as he had asked me for security reasons. Faced with his perplexity I made him a proposal: trust me, you are armed, if I make a mistake shoot. He accepted.

However, photographers and operators on the helicopters could not work in the early stages of the race. I had only a small camera with me that gave us the published photo. As promised Fidel Castro showed up at my side and personally gave the World Cup hulls the go-ahead. The Comandante followed the entire race from the Morro Fortress, which with its lighthouse overlooked much of the circuit, and then returned for the awards ceremony on the podium where, in addition to the winners’ anthems, at my request they played “Hasta Siempre Comandante Che Guevara.” At the end I greeted him by congratulating him on what he represented to millions of people around the world and he replied, “you’re not bad yourself….” He took off his “gorra” (his classic beret) putting it on my head and dedicating it to me later with a famous photo of the revolution, which I jealously preserve (published at the beginning of the report, in which Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, who outlines the plan of an attack, Juan Almeida Bosque and Ramiro Valdez, the commanders of the revolution, and Calisto Garcia, commander of the rebel army, ed. are seen from the left).

From Offshore to Aquabike

I later met with Fidel Castro once more on a personal basis, and then illness faded his public appearances. Instead, my relationship with the Cuban government continued. In 1996 I again organized an Offshore Grand Prix and then, having left this specialty for Aquabike, I returned in 1998 with another Grand Prix in Havana for jet skis that brought over a million people back to the Malecon. The motorboat races had become a kind of popular festival awaited with great enthusiasm by the local population, who could thus forget the grim daily reality. From 2000 to 2004 I organized seven more Aquabike races in Santiago de Cuba and Cienfuegos, and Fidel Castro was always the Chairman of the Committee of Honor. Then, with a new Minister of Tourism, many balances and communication strategies changed, and given the results, they were not exactly very enlightened choices. Thus, after eleven years, motor boating in Cuba ended.

by Alberto Mondinelli

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