Sunday 01 August 2021
Scandal in the Tokyo boxing tournament
Incorrect disqualification escalates into sit-in strike
It sounds absurd, but it is Olympic reality – the French boxer Mourad Aliev is disqualified due to a mistake by the judges, the mistake is even admitted, but cannot be corrected. Now a court will probably have to decide.
Scandal at the fight of the French super heavyweight Mourad Aliev at the Olympic boxing tournament: The 26-year-old was apparently falsely disqualified in his quarter-finals and then went on a sit-in. The matter is likely to end up before the ad hoc department of the International Court of Sport (CAS).
“It’s unfair, everyone saw that I won,” yelled Aliev, slapping at a television camera. He had previously been expelled from Great Britain for an alleged headbutt against his opponent Frazer Clarke. Aliev later insisted that the referee had admitted to having made a wrong decision, which, however, could not be reversed.
“They acknowledge that they made a mistake, but as it says in the regulations, they cannot reverse the decision. This is a scandal,” Aliev said on French television. Clarke called the situation “confusing”.
“There is no appeal,” said John Dovi, Technical Director of the French Boxing Federation: “The supervisor certifies a referee mistake, he says there is no mistake by Mourad, but there is nothing they can do.” President Brigitte Henriques of France’s Olympic Committee (CNOSF) said they had “put together a dossier to challenge the decision before the CAS”.
Controversial decisions through to obvious misjudgments are not uncommon in Olympic boxing history, but the competitions escalated in Rio in 2016. The world association AIBA, which is not allowed to be responsible for organizing the tournament after internal scandals in Tokyo, initially banned all 36 judges and referees after the games.
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