992 days to go
Boxers, bluntly put, are being 'betrayed', according the International Olympic Committee's president Jacques Rogge.
There are currently 420 of the betrayed beings in China, the world's finest amateurs from 79 countries, slugging it out in Mianyang in Sichuan in the World Championships. The few devotees that made the journey to the west have been treated to some truly great bouts there this week. But it's behind the scenes down in Sichuan that the gloves are off and things are really getting nasty. There's a lot at stake. For a start, there's about US$9 million to be fought for, not to mention the sport's reputation. And if things are not sorted out soon, some say its long-held Olympic status might also be called into question.
The problem is that the IOC, and many others, believe the boxing competitions in the Athens Games have often been farcical. Or more accurately, the judging was. Even before the summer of 2004 the games organisers had long-standing concerns about how the International Boxing Association (Aiba) had been run under 82-year-old Pakistani Anwar Chowdhry, who has been at the helm for 20 years.
Chowdhry and his cohorts have enraged the Swiss brigade, which now firmly believes that bribery, crooked judges and match-rigging are as much part of the pugilistic process as gumshields, black eyes and bloody noses.
In Athens, question marks loomed large over the Egyptian boxers in particular, who took two bronze and a silver, by far their best Olympic result. Egyptian Ismail Osman chairs the body that appointed all the referees and judges in Athens.