Cuban rowers Liosbel Hernandez, Liosmel Ramos, Manuel Suarez and Wilber Turro celebrate a gold medal at the 2011 Pan Am Games. Ramos, Suarez and Turro, along with current teammate Orlando Sotolongo, dropped out of the competition in St. Catharines and defected to the United States.ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP / Getty Images
Four Cuban rowers at the Pan American Games have defected to the United States, the team's coach said Wednesday, and a sports agent who has helped other Cuban athletes cross the border said the number of defectors could reach the double digits before the Games' closing ceremonies.
Coach Juan Carlos Reyes said Liosmel Ramos and Wilber Turro dropped out before the regatta began on Saturday, while Manuel Suarez and Orlando Sotolongo competed in earlier races and then withdrew.
The four have been in touch with teammates through Facebook, Mr. Reyes said.
Joe Kehoskie, a baseball agent who has helped several Cubans cross into the U.S., said he wasn't surprised the four rowers ditched their team – in fact, the number of defectors is likely to increase.
"It really couldn't be easier for these guys. All they needed to do if they defected in St. Catharines is cross one of the bridges into the United States and physically present themselves at an immigration checkpoint," Mr. Kehoskie said in an interview from Syracuse, N.Y. U.S. immigration policy allows for Cubans to be automatically taken in as refugees with little fanfare when they arrive at the border.
While baseball players are constantly offered trips across the border by smugglers, "people don't target rowers or cyclists or athletes that aren't worth potentially big money," Mr. Kehoskie said.
He believes the rowers planned their defection months, or even years, in advance. "It probably wasn't a spur-of-the-moment thing," he said.
The rowing venue in St. Catharines, Ont., is only a few kilometres from the U.S. border.
Games officials said Wednesday morning that they weren't aware of the defections.
"I'm not aware of the specific point, but we have a protocol that we would follow. This is something that is dealt with through our integrated security unit and, if necessary, through the relevant national Olympic committee," organizing committee CEO Saad Rafi said.
A spokesperson for the Pan Am Games directed further requests for comment Wednesday evening to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
Canadian immigration officials said they couldn't comment on asylum claims south of the border, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection said they could not release information on specific cases due to privacy concerns.
"We continue to seek to promote safe, legal and orderly migration from Cuba under our migration accords and deter dangerous, unlawful migration from Cuba," the department said in a statement.
Mr. Reyes told the St. Catharines Standard that the rowers were aided by Cubans living in the U.S.
"They even do signs for them showing them the way to go so they can go there without any problems," he told the paper. "Others have been approaching some of our other athletes to do that as well."
He said some of the defectors have already contacted other Cuban athletes in Toronto for the Games, encouraging them to also cross the border.
At the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg in 1999, Cuban pitcher Danys Baez left the team, soon after signed a multimillion-dollar contract and played many years in the major leagues. Jose Iglesias, now an all-star infielder with the Detroit Tigers, defected in Edmonton in 2008. And some of the soccer players who defected in Toronto in 2012 now play in a second-tier North American league.
The Cuban delegation originally consisted of 461 athletes competing in 225 events.
With files from Madeline Smith and Joe Friesen and a report from the Canadian Press
Dakshana Bascaramurty