Cuba said goodbye on Tuesday to heavyweight boxing great Teofilo Stevenson, who won three Olympic gold medals and became a symbol of communist pride when he refused to fight for money.
A day after he died of a heart attack at age 60, Stevenson was buried in Havana's historic Colon Cemetery, where about 200 people gave him a long round of applause and sang the Cuban national anthem.
At his peak, Stevenson was a symbol of the purity of amateur sport idealized by Fidel Castro, who banned professional athletics after taking power in Cuba's 1959 revolution. He was also a powerful propaganda tool for the island's communist system.
Tall, graceful and powerful, he was considered by many the equal of Muhammad Ali, the professional heavyweight boxing champion who himself won an Olympic gold medal in 1960, but he rejected a $5 million offer to fight him.