Irish Olympic Chances

By Cliona Foley

Saturday August 23 2008

JUST 24 hours before Dubliner Kenny Egan goes up against a Chinese boxer for an Olympic gold medal, the Beijing boxing tournament was rocked to its core last night with the revelation that the organisers have had to take evasive action to stop bribery of match judges and referees.

After an afternoon of allegations and drama outside the ring at the Workers’ Gymnasium, the International Boxing Association (AIBA) were forced to admit that they are revising the daily draws for officials and referees, which are usually done randomly by a computer.

This is because “two months prior to the competition AIBA obtained information regarding a possible attempt on the part of certain individuals, both within the organisation and within the competition officials, to manipulate the competition.”

This extraordinary revelation, coming hot on the heels of some questionable decisions again yesterday, heightened allegations of dodgy judging and matchfixing within amateur boxing. And several top experts, including NBC’s Jim Gray, specifically raised the case of Paddy Barnes, questioning the legitimacy of the scoring which failed to give the young Belfast fighter a single point against his Chinese opponent. “It was apparent to some of us that this was predetermined,” Gray alleged.

“I would totally agree that it’s a bit disheartening for a boxer to leave the ring after four rounds of what appeared to be a very busy contest with a zero,”said the tournament’s technical director Terry Smith. “It’s not our wish to do so, but unfortunately it’s one of the drawbacks of the system we have in place.” To score a point, three of the five judges must agree simultaneously and Smith said that while some of the judges gave Barnes 7-8 points, others gave him 4-5, but they did not come together and materialise as actual scores.

“I’ll be the first to admit that not every point scored in boxing is recorded,” Smith said. “But we just know that most of the time the right boxer wins.” Regarding the attempted bribing of officials, Smith said that the revision of match officials was based on no concrete evidence but was a precaution because of a lot of rumour and innuendo. However, AIBA also would not clarify what they meant when they said that, “after the situation became more serious,” they notified the International Olympic Committee (IOC), who now also have an independent observer monitoring the daily draws for match officials.

The scandal broke last night because earlier in the day another of the tournament’s ‘technical delegates,’ Romanian Rudel Obreja, himself one of the vicepresidents of AIBA, independently called a press conference and alleged that Olympic match officials were deliberately being changed. He also said that he had been asked by a top official what referee he would like for a bout involving a Romanian fighter.

AIBA have now suspended Obreja – “for holding an unofficial press conference” – and have started an investigation into his allegations. But Terry Smith insisted last night that they are confident that none of the 250 Olympic bouts to date have been rigged. American Dr Tom Virgets, who heads up the AIBA disciplinary commission who is now investigating these allegations, was asked what he could do to allay the fears of boxers like Egan that their Olympic finals might not be fairly refereed and judged.

“I would say that, for 20 years, this is an organisation that has been under a cloud of suspicion. But I would say we have seen, under the new reforms, that this suspicion has been significantly reduced and that the individuals who are part of this, the technical delegates, have made all the precautions that they can take to ensure that there is equity in terms of the scoring.”

- Cliona Foley