Ever since Olympic kayaker Angel Perez defected from Cuba to Miami seven years ago, he has aspired to win a medal for his adopted country. He envisioned it as the ultimate symbol of his rebirth in the land of opportunity.

But with the 2000 Summer Games just four weeks away, Perez is in the awkward position of seeking Fidel Castro's blessing to compete for the U.S. team in Sydney.

A complicated International Olympic Committee rule designed to prevent athletes from playing musical countries is strangling Perez's Olympic dream in bureaucratic red tape and political maneuvering.

The Cuban government, which calls Perez a traitor, won't budge.

The U.S. Olympic Committee and the U.S. canoe/kayak federation will plead Perez's case at an IOC meeting on Aug. 28, but the IOC is unlikely to waive its own bylaw or overrule Cuba. As a last resort, Perez would then go before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, an independent panel.

Perez, who competed in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics for Cuba, hopes he'll be in a U.S. boat Sept. 26. He continues his exhausting regimen in a sport that requires a high threshold for the pain of calloused hands, blistered buttocks, ripped toenails and aching arms flushed with lactic acid from churning up to 170 strokes per minute. This week, he and his U.S. teammates are at a high-altitude training camp at Lake Crowley in Mammoth, Calif.

Perez, who has lived in South Florida since his defection, says he often awakes from a nightmare in which he's paddling not toward the finish line but toward a precipice.

``Not knowing what's going to happen and feeling caught in the middle is like torture,'' said Perez, 29. ``All I can do is try to shut out the distractions and keep training like I'm going to the Olympics.''

Kayaker Peter Newton finished second to Perez at the 1991 Pan Am Games in Havana. Now they are teammates. Newton holds no grudge and says Cuba shouldn't, either.

``The Olympics is about sports, and Cuba is turning this into a political issue,'' he said. ``Angel is our best athlete and should be allowed to compete.''

Perez, consistently ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the U.S. the past three years, occupies seat No. 4 and is responsible for generating the most power. Without Perez in the boat, the U.S. has little chance of winning a medal against such countries as Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria.

Perez's teammates are also in jeopardy. Because Perez was not yet a U.S. citizen when he paddled in the American four-man boat that qualified for the Olympics at last summer's world championships, the international canoe/kayak federation is debating whether to throw out the entire boat.

``I am seriously concerned that the ICF may revoke our qualification of the K-4 in the Olympic Games,'' USA Canoe/Kayak executive director Terry Kent wrote Aug. 3. ``This is, of course, the realization of our worst fear with the Angel Perez situation.''

Kent said the U.S. team leader was reassured a year ago at the world championships that Perez's eligibility was not a problem because Perez was soon to receive his U.S. passport. Kent said he was also told by the USOC that obtaining a release from Cuba would not be a problem.

In an Aug. 7 letter to USOC president Bill Hybl, however, the kayak team complains that the decision to enter Perez was ``a strategic mistake . . . based on hopeful information but not on the rules.''

``We have been kept in the dark about this mess,'' Perez said. ``I was constantly told, `Don't do anything. We'll handle it.' I think it has been mishandled.''

The USOC was counting on cooperation from the Cuban sports ministry, which argues that granting a waiver to Perez would only set a dangerous precedent that would encourage more defections. Cuba has already been embarrassed by defecting baseball stars such as pitcher Orlando ``El Duque'' Hernandez, who fled in a boat, signed a multimillion dollar contract and helped the New York Yankees win the World Series in 1998 and 1999.

``Taking into consideration that the people of Cuba generate the funds and other resources for the preparation of our athletes and provide training facilities, education, medical services and meals at no charge, it was unseemly for Mr. Perez to have abandoned our delegation in the surreptitious manner in which he did,'' Cuban Olympic Committee president Jose Ramon Fernandez wrote to Hybl in March.

During a July trip to Havana, Hybl was turned down again. Cuba has also rejected the eligibility request of world champion long jumper Niurka Montalvo, who left Cuba to marry a Spaniard in 1998.

``No country can be proud of its gold medals won by foreigners,'' Fernandez said Friday. ``They should be ashamed of attempting to use foreign athletes from a poor nation such as Cuba to win medals.''

Perez and two other kayakers sneaked away from a competition in Mexico City, took a bus to Nuevo Laredo, swam across the Rio Grande and caught another bus to Miami.

Perez arrived with $60 in his pocket and found a job installing alarm systems. He married his wife, Maria, in 1994. They had a son, Andres, in 1996. They bought a house near Metrozoo. All the while Perez kept training at the Miami Rowing Club off Rickenbacker Causeway. He made the U.S. national team and moved up in the rankings. He volunteered as a coach for the Ransom Everglades high school team. He got a job at Home Depot through the Olympic Job Opportunities Program. He became a U.S. citizen Sept. 25, 1999.

IOC Charter rule 46 requires an athlete who competed in an Olympics for one country to wait three years after becoming a citizen of another country before he can compete in the Olympics under his new flag.

Perez is angry at USA Canoe/Kayak officials because he says they did not inform him about rule 46 until March. He and his teammates assumed he simply needed U.S. citizenship. Had he known about the rule three years ago, he might have quit the sport.

``It's a lot of sacrifice. You're putting in long days with no financial payoff,'' he said. ``Maybe I would have finished my education, gotten a different job or started a business.''

Perez, who estimates that the federation has invested $60,000 in him for travel, training and stipends, faults the federation for waiting too long to seek his eligibility.

``We never believed Cuba would release him,'' his wife Maria said. ``Then it was the middle of the Elián González situation and we were telling them that Cuba would be even more stubborn. I guess they thought we were two more crazy Cubans because they kept saying, `Don't worry, we have a good relationship with Cuba, and it will work out.' ''

Kent refers to the ``Ilya Gonzales case'' in an Aug. 7 letter to the international federation, explaining that it made ``the Cubans unwilling to assist with any request . . . to give Angel Perez a release . . .''

Kent knows time is running out. His organization and the USOC plan to include Perez on the roster and take him to Sydney. If the IOC turns down the U.S. petition, USOC lawyers will argue Perez's case before the Court of Arbitration.

Perez was a semifinalist at the '92 Games for Cuba, but his paddle broke. In 1996, as a man without a passport, he watched on TV. In Sydney, he hopes to be wearing a U.S. uniform.