THE OLYMPIC FEDERATION of Ireland (OFI) has confirmed that it has submitted its own data analytics to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as part of the review carried out by the boxing taskforce following Daina Moorehouse’s controversial defeat in Paris.
IOC chief executive officer Peter Sherrard said that while “there has been a lot of work done on trying to make boxing less subjective,” they felt “something wasn’t quite right” with the Wicklow native’s split-decision loss to France’s Wassila Lkhadiri in the women’s 50kg division.
It later emerged in a report in The Times that two of the judges involved in Moorehouse’s fight – Emil Gurbanaliyev and Sergei Krutasov – had previously been stood down in 2021 after being randomly selected for integrity testing and found to be at “high risk” of manipulating bouts.
The pair were re-instated for Paris and there was outrage in the immediate aftermath of the fight. Speaking to Morning Ireland, Sherrard said the IOC had contacted the OFI.
“We were in touch with them and provided the data analytics that our analysts had taken down from the fight and asked that they review that as part of the assessment that the boxing taskforce does.
“To be fair, there has been a lot of work done on trying to make boxing less subjective, so the transparent scoring that would come at each round, there’s a PWC oversight group that are employed to check and assess the scoring, but we do feel in that in that case, something wasn’t quite right.
“Look, unfortunately that sometimes is boxing and very glad to see that the boxing programme as a whole, particularly with Kelly’s performance, came through very strongly.”
Elsewhere, OFI president Sarah Keane has confirmed that she has been approached to become the new CEO of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI).
Currently CEO of Swim Ireland, Keane confirmed that no decision on her future has been made as she highlighted a pivotal moment for Irish boxing’s participation at the Games.
Keane explained that the IOC has requested that the OFI withdraw its recognition of the Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA) as the national federation in the coming months.
The IOC wants the IABA to cut ties with the International Boxing Association (IBA), due to concerns around governance and corruption, and demanded that the IABA comes under the umbrella of the newly established World Boxing in order to participate at Los Angeles 2028.
“[If] they vote to stay within the IBA, which means that federation won’t be part of boxing, we’ve been asked as an Olympic committee to cease their membership in the coming months,” she explained to the Irish Examiner.
“Then it’s a case of, if you want boxing at the Olympic Games, and if you want to support high-performance this way, you have to create a new national federation.”
just look at Harrington’s final. the only judge to award the fight to the Chinese girl was the one Asian judge on the panel.
@Niall English: totally agree with you. They should also be questioning that result as its inconceivable that four judges award all three rounds to Kelley and the Asian judge awards all three rounds to her opponent. Corruption of the highest order. One is always in a stronger position to object when one has won the bout.
So the 2 judges 1 a Russian (WTF!) and the other à Uzbek, both considered high risk regarding corruption on the panel and then you wonder why the judging doesn’t match what’s happening in the ring. The sooner they can unleash AI for scoring this type of sport, the better
A bit late now…why wasnt this done as soon as the result was announced?
@Justin Flynn: apparently there was no procedure or mechanism for doing that. They expected there to be too many challenges so they just made it impossible. It’s a fairly rotten environment
New boxing correspondent?
Olympics, greatest scam on earth. Billions of dollars and hardly any goes to the Athletes, who are at the mercy and whim of crooked refs. Four years of someone’s life trashed.