Olympic boxing trials judging system to ‘regain trust’

TOKYO: Olympic boxing officials will trial a new, more transparent judging system this week as the sport fights to “regain trust” after scandals that nearly saw it kicked out of the Games.

The new system, where judges’ scoring is updated in real time on a screen, will be tested at the Ryogoku Kokugikan sumo stadium, where the Tokyo 2020 boxing competition will be held. Amateur boxing body AIBA was stripped of the right to organise the Olympic competition, and replaced with a special taskforce, after a series of problems including a major judging scandal at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Boxing is “on the verge of the crisis of elimination from the Olympics”, Morinari Watanabe, a Japanese Olympic Committee official who heads the taskforce, said on Tuesday.Watanabe was tapped for the role after the IOC suspended recognition of AIBA after an investigation into mismanagement. The decision raised fears that boxing might not feature at the 2020 Games, but the IOC opted to form a taskforce headed by Watanabe to resume preparations that were frozen during its investigation into crisis-riddled AIBA.