Robert McCracken and his Great Britain boxers leave Brazil with gold, silver and bronze medals, a few regrets and worries about the integrity of the tournament but with ambitions to do even better at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
McCracken, who confirmed he wishes to carry on as the team’s coaching director after a decade in the job, said in the aftermath of Joe Joyce’s disappointment in the super-heavyweight final that there was reason for optimism at the next Olympics.
“I always felt that Brazil was going to be the challenge,” McCracken said. “I felt that Tokyo, ongoing, we have a younger, better squad, more strength in depth. We hit our target here, which is a good achievement at such a tough Games. We’ve won eight medals in the last two Olympics and there were only eight medals in the previous 30 years before that. So we’re doing OK. We can build on this.
“Hopefully in Tokyo we’ll have more noticeable boxers who have achieved things, have more seeds like we had when we went to London with Luke Campbell, Fred Evans, Andrew Selby who were highly experienced, battle-hardened GB boxers. We didn’t quite have that here. We had Joe Joyce, we had Nicola Adams and Savannah Marshall but you want four or five established experienced men and women who have been successful in different tournaments on the world stage when you go to the Olympics.
“This team have acquitted themselves well. They have hit their target. We are disappointed that Joe didn’t get the gold but, all in all, it has been a decent cycle.”
There were people in the camp who were more than just disappointed with the verdict that went to France’s Tony Yoka – from their special guest, Anthony Joshua, pretty much all the way through the backroom staff. One senior insider said: “Luck had nothing to do with it.”
The suspicion is that Joyce – who will probably turn professional – was the victim of the dubious decision-making that has spoiled a fortnight of otherwise excellent boxing. McCracken, though, chose his words carefully: “I thought Joe was the fair winner. I think the vast majority of people think Joe was the clear winner. It’s just very disappointing. He thoroughly deserved to be Olympic champion.”
McCracken claimed he could not make a judgment on the fairness of some other contentious decisions because “my focus is the GB team at all times”.
If that smacks of diplomatic overload, others – notably the beaten and hard-done-by Irish bantamweight Michael Conlan – have raged against the officials long and loud. Under the weight of this daily criticism the Aiba president, Wu Ching-Kuo, refused to expose himself to the scrutiny of an open press conference, despite several requests, choosing instead to grant an interview to Associated Press.
Wu reserved his strongest response for Conlan, whose curse-filled exit after losing against Russia’s Vladimir Nikitin attracted widespread coverage. “He immediately showed his finger to the referee-judges,” Wu told AP. “The IOC says this is totally unacceptable. You cannot humiliate people. They are officials. He put himself in a difficult position, I can tell you. A lot of disciplinary action will follow.”
Intemperate as Conlan’s reaction was, it is highly improbable Aiba will have the opportunity to censure him. He said after his bout he would not box again in an Aiba competition, “even if they offered me five million dollars”.
Amateur boxing needs more transparency and humility. Aiba and Wu are the guardians of the sport, not sacrosanct rulers who cannot be challenged. As for humiliation, the poor judging of a handful of ringside officials left some aggrieved losing boxers wondering about their competence and, to use McCracken’s downbeat terminology, disappointed.
