THE worst fears of the men who built Cuba into one of the major powers in international sport have been realised with the defection of two of their outstanding boxers.

Joel Casamayor, who beat Wayne McCullagh in the bantamweight final in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, and light heavyweight Ramon Garbey both went missing from their pre Olympic training camp in Mexico.

A third member of the selected team, featherweight Arnold Mesa has also failed to arrive in Atlanta but in this instance, no explanation was forthcoming.

The changes will be seen as seriously weakening Cuba's chances of repeating their astounding achievement in Barcelona where they provided no fewer than seven of the boxing champions.

In all, the Cubans went on to win 14 gold medals in the 1992 Games, making them the most successful nation, per capita, of the 194 competing countries.

In the sense that every evaluation of the bantamweight championship here has started and ended with Casamayor, his failure to show has provided a major talking point for the boxing community.

Garbey doesn't quite fit the same category but after winning the world championship in 1991, beating Ireland's Dennis Galvin on the way, he was considered as one of the prime contenders for the light heavyweight title.

Athletes jumping ship are regarded as something of an occupational hazard for Cuba's sporting administrators earlier, the pitcher on their Olympic baseball team had also gone AWOL but the loss of two of their outstanding boxers is seen as particularly embarrassing.

The motive, almost certainly, was the chance of pursuing professional careers in the United States and that runs counter to all that Fidel Castro's disciples hold dear in their philosophy on sport.

For all their impressive success in amateur boxing, they have steadfastly refused to countenance the prospect of extending that affluence into the professional game.

Teofilo Stevenson, a triple winner of the Olympic heavyweight tile, could have made a fortune by opting to box for pay but, suitably reassured by guarantees of relative wealth in his native country, he spurned the chance.

Castro's abhorrence of professional boxing is well documented and may have benefited in part, by the fate of Benny "Kid" Paret, one of the nation's legendary boxing personalities, who took such a beating in his world championship fight with Emile Griffith in 1962, that he lapsed into a coma and died a week later.

That tragedy merely served to heighten the sense of indignation among the country's boxing fraternity and to that extent, the actions of Casamayor and Garbey will be interpreted, domestically, as reprehensible.

Whatever about affronted national pride, it provided an animated topic of conservation yesterday in an Olympic city still gearing up for the challenge of discharging its, charter in just over 48 hours time.

Billy Paine, the former professional footballer, who now heads up the local organising committee Acog, acknowledged yesterday that it is not, by any means, a trouble free run in.

"We're still having problems in putting in sufficient phone lines "to meet the huge demand but we're getting there," he said,.

"Some of the concrete is still wet and we'll be working late into the night to make certain that come Friday, everything is shipshape.

"It's been six years in the making but I think that Atlanta and the world in general will be proud of the show that's about to roll."