After headguards, vests next on Olympic ‘hit list’
Singlets being questioned
LONDON, July 24, (RTRS): Male boxers will step into the ring without headguards at the Rio Olympics for the first time since the 1980 Moscow Games, and their vests could be next on the hit list.
With the lines between amateur and professional increasingly blurred, another distinctive difference between the codes — the red or blue singlets worn by Olympic boxers — is being questioned.
“The removal of vests (from the ring) is a proposal we are looking at,” a spokesman for governing body AIBA told Reuters in response to a query.
“It has to be approved by the relevant AIBA commission and approved by the executive committee and then we will present this request to the IOC (International Olympic Committee).” Boxing (WSB) and individual APB Boxing, whose competitors fight for money while remaining eligible for the Olympics, have no headguards or vests.
The arguments for and against headguards, first used at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, may continue for some time but AIBA officials are convinced theirs is the right call.
“Both our statistical research and the feedback from boxers and coaches, shows us that this is the best outcome for our sport,” Wu said in March.
Boxers fought headgear free at the 2013 and 2015 world championships as well as the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Female boxers, who made their Olympic debut only in 2012, will continue with headguards pending further research.
Mike Loosemore of the English Institute of Sport (EIS), who carried out research for the IOC after AIBA requested headguards be removed for Rio, supported the move.
She already knows which countries will be where, but she’s not allowed to say.
Some delegations had already arrived on Saturday, easy to spot with banners or flags hanging off the sides of buildings.
Slovenia had the best banner. In green and white it says: “I Feel sLOVEenia.” The LOVE portion was set off in white type, making sure the message got across. Another read: “All for Denmark.” Banners or flags from Canada, Britain, Portugal, Finland and Sweden were among those spotted. A tiny red and yellow Chinese flag was pinned near the top of one of the compounds.
Everything about the village is massive, though fairly standard for recent Summer Olympics. Organizers say the compound has: 10,160 rooms; 18,000 beds; seven laundries; an enormous, hospital-like clinic; a massive gym.
In addition, organizers are providing 450,000 condoms, three times more than London did four years ago. Among them will be 100,000 female condoms.
Organizers said this is to encourage safe sex. Many had considered that increased supply to be due to Brazil’s outbreak of the Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects.
Asked about it on Saturday, deputy chief medical officer Marcelo Patricio replied: “No, it’s not.”
Then there’s the dining-kitchen area, a sprawling tent where officials expect to serve about 60,000 meals daily to Olympians and staff — and perhaps another 10,000 daily to the hired help.
Meanwhile, thousands of athletes arriving for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics could find major plumbing and electrical problems in their rooms at the Athletes Village with the games opening in just under two weeks.
The International Olympic Committee and local organizers held emergency talks Sunday just hours before the sprawling Athletes Village was set to open officially. The 31-building village will house 18,000 athletes and officials at the height of the games.
This is the latest problem to hit the troubled games.
A man was wrestled to the ground and detained after he tried to steal the Olympic torch as it passed through the Brazilian town of Guarulhos.
In the video on news portal G1, the unidentified man is seen trying to break through the line of security guards accompanying the torch bearer at the 40 kilometer mark of the parade in Sao Paulo state. The man was taken away and the torch bearer continued the run on Saturday.
The torch will be in Sao Paulo for the next days and will arrive in Rio de Janeiro on Aug 4, one day ahead of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
Rio’s Aug 5-21 games have been hit by Brazil’s economic recession, security concerns and fears about the mosquitoborne Zika virus.
American activists from the Black Lives Matter movement marched with Brazilian partners through central Rio de Janeiro on Saturday, to protest police violence before the city hosts the first-ever
Olympics in South America next month.
The activists, better known for campaigning against police brutality and racial profiling in the United States, traveled to Rio to highlight some of the similarities with their cause in Brazil.
The country, Latin America’s biggest, is home more than 200 million people, a majority of whom identify themselves as black or mixed. Those with darker skin, nonetheless, face significant social and economic constraints compared with whites in addition to a dramatically higher rate of conflicts with police.