Olympic triple champion Félix Savón released on parole after six years of imprisonment

January 27, 2025

Olympic triple champion and world six-time boxing champion, Félix Savón Fabré, has been enjoying conditional release since late 2024 after serving six years in a penitentiary center on the outskirts of Havana, according to several sources confirmed to CubaNet.

Savón Fabré was accused of a sexual crime against a minor and his sentence was never communicated to the public, although official secrecy did not prevent his case from becoming known both inside and outside Cuba. It is not known when or where his trial took place, nor who his lawyers were.

"He had about two years left (to serve his sentence)," said a former boxer from national preselection teams, now retired, on condition of anonymity "but he looks 'groggy'."

"Groggy" is a term used in boxing, and popularly as a synonym for "dazed by blows" or "stunned by any cause."

It is unclear whether the parole request allegedly requested by the former boxer or his representatives, or by both, was granted due to his behavior after having served more than half of the sentence imposed as a first-time offender, or due to health problems.

Savón Fabré's release began to be noticed when he appeared more frequently in family photos on the Facebook social media account of one of his daughters, including on Christmas holidays.

Previously, some sources indicated that Savón Fabré had been seen at his home in the Fontanar neighborhood, in the Havana municipality of Boyeros, at specific times while receiving "passes" from the penitentiary center where he was detained, which according to reports is a so-called "farm" where former officials usually serve their sentences of deprivation of liberty.

In 2018 he had been arrested and admitted to the Combinado del Este, as reported at the time by independent journalist Abraham Jiménez Enoa.

Savón Fabré was always seen as a sporting hero on the Island and after Teófilo Stevenson, he was the boxer most admired by the late dictator Fidel Castro.

After his retirement, following his third Olympic gold in Sydney 2000, Savón Fabré dedicated part of his time to painting and exhibited on several occasions in different places in the capital, the last one in the cultural center of Boyeros. There he presented a collection of almost 50 "collages" with photographs of moments in his life, among oil brush strokes. It is unknown whether he continued with this hobby in prison.

In his career the legendary fighter achieved Olympic titles in Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000, thus joining Stevenson and Hungarian Laszlo Papp as the only ones with this achievement in the history of the Summer Games. He could have won a fourth Olympic gold if his country had not boycotted the Seoul 1988 Games.

He also achieved six consecutive AIBA World Championships in 1986 (Reno), 1989 (Moscow), 1991 (Sydney), 1993 (Tampere), 1995 (Berlin), and 1997 (Budapest), as well as a silver medal at the 1999 World Championship in Houston.

In Budapest he lost to Uzbek Ruslan Chagaev 4-14 but weeks later the Cuban received the gold medal when the ex-Soviet was disqualified for two professional fights before the World Championship.

In the American city Savón Fabré lost the title to local Michael Bennett by not appearing after Cuba announced its withdrawal from the competition in protest over arbitration decisions it considered "unfair" and following an order received from Havana from Fidel Castro.

A year later the Guantanamo native knocked out Bennett before the regulation time in the Australian Olympic event. He would win 13 times the Cuban national championship between 1985 and 1998 and in his career achieved victories over men who would later become professional champions such as Bennett himself, Ray Mercer, Shannon Briggs, Lamon Brewster, Ruslan Chagaev and Sultan Ibragimov.

Upon retiring in January 2001 and after 20 years in the ring he had accumulated 342 victories and 17 defeats, nine of them against Cubans. Among the knockdowns received, four were inflicted by his countrymen Juan Carlos Delís Cause (on a couple of occasions), Freddy Rojas and Noel Pérez and two others by Soviet Usman Arsaliyev and North Korean Li Dal-Chen.

No one imagined that the legendary Cuban boxer would cloud his career by starring in one of the most heinous plots in national sports.