Conlan ‘vindicated’ by report into Rio
MICHAEL CONLAN says he feels vindicated by an independent report published last night that found evidence of corruption and manipulation of bouts at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Conlan’s quarter-final defeat in Rio triggered an outcry at the time, with the bantamweight blasting boxing’s world body AIBA as ‘corrupt’, ‘rotten to the core’ and saying officials had robbed him of his dream.
The report, led by Richard McLaren and commissioned by AIBA, suggested at least nine bouts were suspicious while two bouts caused the system to ‘publicly collapse’.
One of those two was Conlan’s bout against Russia’s Vladimir Nikitin, who was so badly injured even though he was declared the winner, that he was unable to fight in the semi-final but still collected a bronze medal.
‘I’m delighted and I hope that justice will be served. It shows that my reactions and my actions during the time were just and now hopefully I’ll have a bit of vindication by the end of this,’ said Conlan who was a 2012 bronze medallist and reigning world and European Champion in 2016.
He said the controversial split decision broke him completely.
‘My goal as a boxer when I started boxing was to become Olympic Champion — I will never, ever become a champion because of what happened,’ he said.
‘I’m probably never going to get that back and it is something I will have to probably live with for the rest my life.’
The Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA) were ‘not surprised’ by the findings of the investigation. Also in the report, an analysis of 65 split decision results in Rio says that 11 of them would have a different winner ‘had all five judges’ scores been taken into consideration’ including Katie Taylor’s quarter-final defeat to Finland’s Mira Potkonen who lost 2-1 but would have won 3-2 had two of the judges scores not randomly been discarded.
Conlan responded to the revelations by asking AIBA to send him his 2016 Olympic medal while the IABA claimed they were disappointed that the long-held suspicions about the Rio Olympics have proven to be true.