During the recent Pan American Games, where athletes from 42 nations gathered in Rio de Janeiro for a fortnight of topnotch competition, one contest that wasn’t on the official calendar caught the public’s eye. Call it the defection game.Guillermo Rigondeaux and Erislandy Lara managed to elude their official minders and slip through a hole in the fence surrounding the athletes’ villa. From there, the story gets fuzzy. Apparently Rigondeaux and Lara were to meet up with a German agent, who reportedly promised them passports, air tickets, and contracts to fight in Europe. In a word: freedom. Somehow, though, the plan collapsed. A few days later, they were arrested by the Brazilian police and bundled off in a plane back to the Antilles, where their fate is uncertain. (A third deserter, from the Cuban handball team, hailed a cab to a suburb of São Paulo, where he evaded capture and filed for asylum.) And that was that.

Or was it?