U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL LOS ANGELES 1991 : Burden Is Off Cuban Defector’s Shoulders : Weightlifting: Tony Urrutia enjoys life in ‘Freedomland.’ Returning home for Pan Am Games is out of the question.

It’s not so much a safety issue as a moral issue, which is why Tony Urrutia defected in the first place.

He was tired of Castro’s Cuba, tired of having the luxury of owning a car when it meant he would drive to visit friends who barely had food and clothing.

Suffering partly from the exhaustion of guilt, during a 1980 training session in Mexico City, he and several other members of the Cuban national weightlifting sneaked out of his fourth-floor hotel window by tying bed sheets together, located the U.S. Embassy, and scaled the back fence to ask for asylum.

So now would Urrutia, an American citizen since 1986, want to go back to Havana, even if it is for the Pan American games next month?

Not on your life. Or his.

“I don’t think it’s safe with how things are going now,” he said. “I don’t think it’s safe for anybody, even the American guys, if for no other reason than if somebody doesn’t like you, they will pull a trick. They will put something in your food, put something in your locker.

“And I would feel more guilt if I go over and see people starving to death. The food me and my teammates are going to eat is the people’s food.

“I don’t know exactly what would happen, but I don’t take the chance. After everything I went through to get here and start a life with a family and new friends and my future plans, to go to your own country, (what if) something bad happens? That’s it. How am I going to get back if they do something to my passport? Swim?”

So the United States’ No. 1 lifter in the 82 1/2-kilogram division, who will go for a gold medal in the Olympic Festival Saturday at UCLA’s Royce Hall, will not go to the Pan Ams. It would be easier to clean-and-jerk the truck he drives for a supermarket chain in Miami than go back.

Instead, he will send clothing and other hard-to-find items such as sewing kits with the other American weightlifters, to deliver to his sister, one of several relatives he left behind.

Meanwhile, he is hoping that his 12-year-old son from a previous marriage can join Urrutia and his Italian-born wife and another son and daughter for good within the month at their home in Hollywood, Fla.

Then Urrutia’s ties to Cuba will be even more microscopic. What remains now is simply because of relatives; he holds no allegiance to his native country. Ask him if he would like to return just for a visit and he says there is nothing for him to be reminded of but oppression and bad living conditions.

It’s different now in Florida--a far cry, too, from his early days in Miami’s Little Havana barrio, where he slept in the back seat of an abandoned car on a side street. He is planning to retire after the 1992 Olympic Games, no matter his finish, and is already taking physical science classes at Broward Community College in anticipation of becoming a strength coach and opening his own gym. The plan also includes being so successful that he will be able to help sponsor the U.S. women’s weightlifting team, because it needs more financial help than the men’s team.

Welcome to his fantasy becoming reality.

“You know how people like Disneyland?” he asked. “I like Freedomland.”

What hasn’t changed with his passport is his prominence in weightlifting, a sport he began at 12. He was world champion while representing Cuba in 1977, ’78 and ‘79, and finished sixth in the 1976 Olympics in the 67 1/2-kilogram class. Since coming to the United States, he has won four national titles, set American records and finished eighth in the 1988 Seoul Games.

He makes his first trip to Los Angeles as the man to beat for a second consecutive Olympic Festival title, and of the three other lifters in his class, two are more than 10 years younger and the other is six years his junior. He can’t hold off that kind of inevitable charge forever.

“He has dominated U.S. weightlifting only because of his own standards,” said Stan Bailey, a former Olympian from Trinidad and Tobago who has known Urrutia since 1973 and has been his personal coach since ’87. “He’s lifting 30 to 40 kilos below his best, but he can still dominate. He was a world champion. The weights he has lifted, we have yet to come close to that--all the other athletes in this country.”

At 33, Urrutia’s best days in lifting are clearly behind him. The other parts of his life are just beginning.

“That’s the only thing that motivates him,” Bailey said. “That’s the only reason he’s still lifting. He feels so good about being able to put something back into the sport in the United States.

“He doesn’t care if he lifts or not. He’s just happy to be in this country.”