The boxers who may have been victims of corrupt judges and officials at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games are unlikely to receive an upgrade in medals, the man leading the investigation has suggested.
In September Professor Richard McLaren said that as many as 11 bouts were under scrutiny after an investigation into “corruption, bribery and the manipulation of results”. Among them was the gold-medal contest that Great Britain’s Joe Joyce controversially lost to France’s Tony Yoka, and the Irishman Michael Conlan’s quarter-final defeat by Russia’s Vladimir Nikitin.
But McLaren, the Canadian lawyer who also led the investigation into state-sponsored doping in Russia, said that the subjective nature of boxing judging made it difficult legally to alter the result of a bout. Yesterday McLaren presented more evidence of corruption that included the manipulation of fights at this year’s AIBA Youth World Boxing Championships in Poland.
When asked if they had analysed the fights under scrutiny in Rio, McLaren said: “We’ve come to this conclusion that the officiating in boxing is highly subjective, as there are no real benchmarks by which to evaluate the bout.
“So while we did a number of different methodologies so we could declare a bout was manipulated, we concluded that it’s not possible to do that to the level to bring about disciplinary action.”
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In the latest report McLaren explains further: “There is little doubt that the manipulation of bouts took place at Rio as was described in the stage one report. However, the extent to which manipulation occurred cannot be quantified and meeting the necessary legal standards to be definitive remains elusive.”
