Judges not scoring body blows: IABA official

Add as a preferred source on Google

Sydney: Only one team lodged a protest during the opening week of Olympic boxing, but some ringside judges are not scoring enough body blows, amateur boxing officials said on Saturday.

International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA) general secretary Loring Baker said Cameroon was the only country to complain formally after a defeat and it was rejected.

That first round fight involved Canadian light middleweight Scott MacIntosh, who beat Sakio Bika Mbah 8-5, and Cameroon's protest was against the referee.

Baker did voice concern about body blows, however, citing the case of light-flyweight world champion Brian Viloria of the United States, who lost 6-4 to France's Brahim Asloum on Friday.

Baker, who recognised he was in a sensitive position as an American, said he and AIBA president Anwar Chowdhry had discussed that fight on Friday and with officials on Saturday.

"In watching the monitor we didn't pick up more than one or two body blows that were scored," he said. "Perhaps the judges just didn't do as good a job on scoring body punches as they could have."

Some observers thought Viloria had landed a good number of body blows that were not scored. But the United States did not file any protest and Baker said such blows could be very difficult for judges to see.

Judges press a button when they see a scoring punch. Three of the five judges must score the point within a second of each other for it to count.

Too many hits

"In general we're satisfied with the officiating," said Baker, although some judges had been talked to about either not hitting scoring buttons enough or too much.

"We just brought to their attention that they were not as astute or, within the confines of the other four judges, they were a little off-base."

AIBA invited reporters to see the computerised scoring at close hand on Saturday, with a mock fight in the ring and judges scoring it as they would during the tournament.

Baker said that "the computer is here to stay" in amateur boxing but that the scoring system might be refined for future Olympics.

Chowdhry spoke openly about irregularities at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, when the judges could see the scores, as an argument against "open scoring".

Since Barcelona, the public and judges have been unable to see running scores during fights although the media and officials watching television monitors can see them.

Chowdhry said that in Barcelona the judges had been influenced by being aware of the scores and added that AIBA officials had tried to persuade him to make the scores secret during those Games.

"We tried it (open scoring) in the Olympic Games and it failed miserably. It was immediately after that that we changed the rules completely. If the judges come to know who is leading, they want to be on the winner's side," he said. "They don't want to go with the loser's side, this is human nature."

AIBA have introduced "spy cameras" over the ring for the Sydney Games to be able to monitor judges scoring in relation to movements in the ring.

They have also offered to double the money of any judge providing evidence that he has been offered a bribe. Nobody has ever produced such concrete evidence despite various allegations of corrupt behaviour in the past.Chowdhry said that "there is no question of mistrust" about the scoring and judges.

"We want to improve it," he said. "If there's anything wrong, we've got to tell them. We want to see the performance improve, become better than it was before."



(c) Reuters Limited.