OL i Beijing

25 September 2008

Dear Member Federations

It is my great pleasure on this occasion to write to you in my position as head Technical Delegate at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to express my congratulations to all members who were involved in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games boxing competition. Whether that be through participating, organizing or attending, the event was truly a great spectacle, best illustrated by the record number of countries who won a gold medal (nine out of a possible 11).

I would also like to take this opportunity to inform you that since returning from Beijing I have been disappointed to hear of accusations being made by certain parties and indeed certain EC Members making unfounded statements to their national press that the integrity of the boxing competition at the Games was breached by incompetent Officials and corrupt AIBA Members 

It has been stated that the selection process for the R&Js was suspect and that the final 31 who were selected were not good enough to attend the Games.

It has been said that there were many 'disputed decisions' and that the scoring in numerous bouts was too low.

I will in the first instance address the R&Js Selection Process, which started at the World Championships in Chicago, extended to the qualification tournaments in Pescara, Bangkok, Port of Spain, Algiers and finally Samoa. The AIBA President Dr. C.K. Wu, Members of the T&R Commission, Confederation Presidents and I as Chairman of the R&J Commission all participated in compiling the list of 31 officials. These 31 R&Js along with the 3 Chinese Host Country R&J were all invited to attend a Workshop in Beijing and finally to officiate at the President's Cup in Taipei. For reasons that had no reflection on their ability 3 of the R&J were replaced by substitutes from the reserve list. Some of the R&J had been on the Workshops for the Athens games and commented that the Beijing preparations were much more informative and called for greater candidate participation than in Abu Dubai.

I will not claim that the selection process and the pre-games workshop and prep-tournament cannot be improved upon but I will bring your attention to the fact that there was a 'Selection Process'. In previous games it was almost a prerequisite that a nation had to have a member on the AIBA EC to stand any chance of selection (please check your records). This time 19 of the 31 R&J selected have no connection with EC Members.

Disputed decisions and low scoring. Starting with the claims of low scoring, it is easy to blame this on the R&J but one must also consider how much the advent of 'Open Scoring' has changed the way our boxers perform or how they are trained to perform. The number of boxers who, having secured a small lead, use negative tactics, running, holding, falling over, etc to prevent their opponents scoring has increased to epidemic proportions and obviously this has a direct influence on the scoring of a contest. We instructed our Referees to take action against boxers who employed the aforementioned tactics but in fairness to them it takes a very brave man to penalise a boxer probably in the last round of the contest and very likely to cause the warned boxer to lose the contest. Whatever happens the Referee will only ever please half of the people 'dammed if he does, dammed if he doesn’t’. I would also add that in my opinion and also the opinion of many keen observers and pundits the standard of boxing at the Beijing Games was the lowest seen for a great many years. It is a reasonable assumption that these factors contributed towards the allegation of low scoring.

With regards to 'bad decisions' how many actually were there? Are we to consider that the decision in every close contest is a 'disputed decision'? It probably is to the coaches, nation, supporters and media of the losing boxer but I have seldom heard the same people of the winning boxer claim that the result was ‘disputed’. If a person or persons believe a close decision to be disputed, don’t forget there are just as many people who would disagree.

We have just completed a wonderful tournament where the global distribution of medals is far wider than it has ever been and we have seen the emergence of nations who have never before won medals at the games but instead of being pleased with the overall success of the competition we have certain members trying to vilify our administration and others willing to make unfounded incrimination's to support them and all they are trying to do at the detriment to AIBA is to further their own political aspirations.

Reports have also been cited that 'certain people' made attempts to manipulate and corrupt our R&J and that one Gold Medal was actually bought. Should anyone be able to substantiate these allegations then I would advise for action to be taken as soon as possible. But for now, there are only allegations.

Regards

Terry Smith

Technical Delegate 2008 Beijing Olympics.
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