Open Season Declared On Corruption
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday October 22, 2005
Fans will see the scores at the end of each round of boxing bouts at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, but judges won't.
The move to open scoring is in response to an IOC freeze of $US12m ($16m) in funds to AIBA, the international amateur boxing association, following the Herald's exposure of corrupt judging at the Athens Olympics.AIBA delegates met in Liverpool, England, last weekend to ease the impasse. IOC president Jacques Rogge is determined to withhold funds until the sport makes judging transparent and rids itself of corrupt officials.AIBA vice-president Sol Spitalnic, who is also president of Boxing Australia, attended the meeting, and said: "There will be open scoring in Melbourne because it has to be done following an undertaking AIBA has made to Rogge."They had open scoring at the women's world championships in Russia recently and will have it at next month's world championships in China. [Anwar] Chowdhry [AIBA president] has come round to open scoring because he knows if they don't get the money, they won't have the sport. As it is, they are already losing interest on the frozen money."Open scoring involves posting the scores from all five ringside judges on a TV screen at the end of each round, although the figures are not visible to the judges, lest they be influenced by the progressive count.However, this will not prevent corrupt judges continuously pressing a computer key in favour of a boxer they have agreed to support.At the Athens Olympics, Australian heavyweight Adam Forsyth was beaten by an Egyptian boxer in a verdict so violently in contempt of plausibility that onlookers, such as former Wallabies captain John Eales, were horrified. Egypt won three medals in Athens, surpassing the country's best ever result, a bronze medal in Rome in 1960. The program in Athens was run by an Egyptian, Dr Ismail Osman, who appointed a combination of judges to certain fights. The highest number of protests in Athens was against Egypt, none allowed. Fans stormed Osman and his jury after a Greek boxer lost a light-heavyweight bout to an Egyptian.Spitalnic said he expected Osman to be removed at next year's AIBA congress in the Dominican Republic. "Everyone is up for re-election then," he said. "All positions will be vacant and Osman has to go."However, the glacial pace of change may not satisfy Rogge. "The IOC had a representative at the Liverpool meeting and he will report back," said Spitalnic. "But some of them there think they are bigger than the IOC."AOC president John Coates, an IOC member, said: "The Herald investigation into boxing in Athens revealed the extent of the problem and AIBA must continue the process of reform so boxing can continue as an Olympic sport after Beijing."
© 2005 Sydney Morning Herald