The Guardian are tonight reporting that senior officials involved in amateur boxing believe that the reuslts of major fights at the Olympics may be fixed.
The officials believe that a group of judges have the power to manipulate both the draw and the judging system in order to decide results, and as result, medals.
One official alleged that a particular group of referees get together to decide how to score certain fights, with a source telling The Guardian's Owen Gibson that he is in "no doubt" that some boxing judges and officials in Rio will be corrupted.
Here is an excerpt from the report explaining how the fixing has evolved:
It is alleged that corrupt officials, directed to score bouts in a certain way for a variety of reasons, are said to have initially relied on hand or head signals to manipulate judges at the end of each round so they knew which corner to select the winner from. But after being challenged at a number of major championships they are said to have changed their system, no longer relying on signals but meeting prior to major championships to decide on certain bouts.
“This is all being done very quietly,” said one senior source. “Some bouts are so bloody blatant it’s obvious. It sickens me to my stomach.”
An Irish judge, Seamus Kelly, went on record with the Guardian to explain how he was asked to fix a fight in 2013. Kelly told the paper that he was asked to cheat during the Arab Games in 2011 by indicating who was winning during the fight.
Kelly was sent home from the Youth World Championships by the AIBA in 2014 for what The Guardian term an aggressive attitude towards colleagues, and despite a subsequent apology, the organisation have decided against reinstating him.
The AIBA have responded strongly to Kelly's accusations:
Mr Kelly’s allegations are baseless and damaging to our sport. His correspondence to us over the last two years has been erratic, bordering on extortion at times, and once he understood that he would not reintegrate into AIBA despite numerous emails, he has decided to launch false accusations against our organisation.
Read the full report, which delves into the issue in greater detail, on the Guardian website.
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