Amateur boxing closer to abyss
DARREN O’NEILL reckons his life would have been very different if he didn’t have an Olympic dream to pursue. The talented underage hurler would have probably remained in the bosom of the GAA. He might have run out at Croke Park, wearing the black and amber of Kilkenny and have a handful of Celtic Crosses at home, rather than his cherished memories of captaining Ireland’s most successful boxing team at London 2012.
Now, though, with boxing’s Olympic future shrouded in uncertainty, he wonders how many gifted young fighters are out there now, contemplating devoting their time and energy to other sports. After all, without an Olympic presence, can amateur boxing even exist?
‘It is a disaster for boxing and a disaster for Ireland as an Olympic nation,’ he reflects following the election of Uzbekistan’s Gafur Rakhimov as head of the AIBA in spite of warnings from the International Olympic Committee that the sport could be thrown out if he was elected. (Rakhimov has been sanctioned by the US Treasury department for alleged links to international heroin trafficking.)
The Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA) confirmed two days ago that even though more than 60 per cent voted for Rakhimov, the IABA backed his opponent, Kazakhstan’s Serik Konakbayev. It was a welcome statement.
‘I would have been disgusted if our federation had voted for Rakhimov,’ O’Neill adds. ‘Anyone with a shred of dignity or who cared about the sport would not have voted that way, that’s why I find it suspicious that he got over 60 per cent.’
Amid the whole mess, the sport itself struggles on. There’s an Irish men’s team currently competing in the EU championships in Spain while six Irish boxers are travelling to New Delhi for the women’s world championships, which starts on Thursday.
In his role as the IABA’s High Performance director, Bernard Dunne will be in the corner for the Ireland team in India and he insists that the programme they have devised for Olympic qualification is unaffected by the threat that the sport may not feature in Tokyo.
‘The only thing we are focused on is getting our athletes to perform, and to perform to the best of their abilities,’ Dunne says.
‘This is about getting our athletes ready for the qualification process in 2019 and Tokyo 2020. What we are doing is building a team and preparing them for Tokyo. That’s our only focus.’
It would seem that Dunne and his High Performance team don’t believe that the uncertainty surrounding the sport will impact on their athletes at these two tournaments. At some point in the next fortnight, it is likely that the number of medals which Ireland has won in international competition will climb above 40 (it currently stands at 39). It underlines the depth of talent still being produced.
‘Boxing is in our DNA as a country, I think the number of medals bear that out,’ he adds. And it is a strong Irish team that he will oversee in New Delhi, led by Kellie Harrington, the gifted Dubliner who won a silver medal at the last world championships.
Harrington will represent Ireland at lightweight, where she won bronze at this year’s European championship, losing her semifinal to Finland’s Mira Potkonen, who beat Katie Taylor in Rio. Meanwhile, Michaela Walsh, another European bronze medallist, boxes at featherweight. Ceire Smith fights at flyweight, Grainne Walsh at welterweight while light-welterweight Amy Broadhurst and middleweight Aoife O’Rourke make their debuts at the worlds.
This was supposed to be their first step towards Tokyo. The current controversy has rumbled on since the Rio Olympics when the scandalous judging forced the IOC into coming down hard on AIBA. New Delhi, as a result, will be closely monitored.
As an elite boxer, it was accepted that you would come out on the wrong end of a poor decision at some stage. O’Neill says he’s had a few during his time in the High Performance programme.
‘It used to be that the judging was a little fairer in Olympic years, because they knew that everyone was watching. But you saw in Rio that they don’t even care about that now,’ O’Neill pointed out.
‘It’s been going on for years, Everyone who has boxed at an elite level internationally will have experienced it, that feeling of being robbed. And the judges sitting outside the ring... they don’t care about the athlete or the sacrifices they’ve made, but they are messing with people’s dreams and their livelihoods because a boxer’s funding might get reduced because a corrupt decision went against them.’
To him, it’s heartbreaking to see amateur boxing in such a sorry state but reckons that it might not be the worst thing for the sport if it is removed from the Olympic programme.
‘Maybe this is the kick up the backside boxing needs. And while it is desperately sad that the Olympic dreams of athletes are in jeopardy, maybe the sport needs this shock to get its house in order because it has been completely corrupt,’ he admitted. For years, he’s advised young fighters to remain in the amateur ranks. Not anymore. ‘I always told young boxers to stay amateur because it was safer and there was more accountability, while it was the pro game that stank. But that’s flipped now. You still get bad decisions in the pro game but it is far, far worse now in amateur boxing,’ he said.
‘I tell young boxers now to stay in the amateur ranks for a couple of years, get their education in the ring and, if the opportunity arises, turn professional. It is deflating and heartbreaking to say that about my sport, but that is the situation we are at.’
Sport Ireland have said that the situation for amateur boxing is ‘grave’ and there is a profound threat to it as an Olympic sport. It is a threat that everybody seems to take seriously, except those within the administration of the sport.
The fate of Ireland’s most successful Olympic sport will be decided in Tokyo at the end of this month.
But, given what those that govern boxing decided last weekend in Moscow, it seems that many within the sport itself have some sort of death wish.
After all, if there is no amateur boxing at the Olympics, how can it possibly survive?