BOXING: OLYMPIC QUALIFIERSYESTERDAY MARKED 100 days before the Olympic torch is lit in London's east end. In Trabzon, the Turkish boxing team organised a small, private celebration for themselves at the boxing venue Hayri Gür Spor Salon, set high on a hill overlooking The Black Sea.
After the lights had dimmed in the arena and the crowd had left, the entire Turkish team and officials gathered in one of the two rings for a presentation. A table was set up in the middle and glasses of Turkish tea and biscuits were passed around as athletes and officials posed on the piece of canvas that has been kind to their efforts over the last five days.
Who knows what the good natured fuss was about and it may well have been about 100 days to go but Turkey may just as much have been marking their run of success in these Olympic Qualifiers.
On Wednesday, as Irish light flyweight Paddy Barnes secured his place in London and pointedly expressed a wish to silence the intensely vocal crowd when he meets Ferhat Pehlivan today in his semi-final, Turkey had nine fighters in action at the quarterfinal stages of the competition. Just one of these lost.
The day highlighted an enviable position the host nation has earned in the ring. Eight Turkish semi-finalists at light flyweight, flyweight, lightweight, light welterweight, welterweight, middleweight, light heavyweight, where European champion Joe Ward’s nemesis Bahram Muzaffer continues his run, and super heavyweight, will rock up today seeking places in the finals.
It’s remarkable because not one Turkish boxer made the quarterfinal stages of the World Championships last year in Baku, which also doubled as an Olympic Qualifier.
Ireland earned three of their London 2012 positions there, with Michael Conlan, Darren O’Neill and John Joe Nevin making the grade. Ward should also have qualified. But that’s another story.
Having turned down the opportunity to host these qualifiers initially, Turkey thought better of it when the World Championships went belly up for them and they decided to return to the bid idea.
Turkey made an attractive offer and here we are.
Whether Ward’s case was a matter of bad judgment by officials or something more inappropriate, people now wait with baited breath to see if FAI president John Delaney’s honeyed words with International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge will be as effective for the teenager as his campaign for Ireland to become the 33rd World Cup team.
Ward’s Olympic dream has perished for now. Let’s hope football’s intervention doesn’t end with Rogge sniggering from a dais.
But if we believe that culture shapes politics then in Ireland none of us are blameless. But Turkey has had specific problems with corruption in sport and last summer it blew up in their faces when Turkish police began an investigation into 19 football matches suspected of being fixed.
By early July, 61 individuals had been arrested, including club managers and national players. Of those, 26 would later have requests for release refused by the court. In August, Istanbul Police Department Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB) and the prosecutor discovered that game six of the final basketball series between Fenerbahçe Ülker and Galatasaray was manipulated and before the game, phone conversations took place between Fenerbahçe basketball manager Semih Özsoy and Recep Ankarali, the referee.
This week in the wake of Ward’s distress, it has been easy to point the finger. But the issue appears to be one for world boxing as much as provincial Turkey, although in Trabzon there’s no issue at all.
In the 2011 Corruption Perception Index, an annual table compiled by global organisation Transparency International, which measures the perceived levels of public sector corruption in 183 countries around the world, Turkey scored 4.2 on a scale of zero to 10, where the higher score means less corruption is perceived.
Ireland scored 7.5 on the table, while Scandinavian countries registered over nine. Last year’s World Boxing Championships were in Baku, Azerbaijan, which scored 2.4. Next year’s World Championships are in Astana, Kazakhstan, which scored 2.7, and the next European Championships will be in Minsk, Belarus, which registered 2.4.
The reality is there are alternative ways of living. Some countries don’t have ethical baggage about how they conduct themselves. It’s the way things work, just another system in operation.
It may turn 18-year-old Irish boxers into cynics but it is something that was rumbling down the road from far out and its something with which boxing has learned to live with.
Today when Barnes tries to silence the crowd and move closer towards the gold medal, Adam Nolan lines out for a semi-final that would get him to London 2012 and Tommy McCarthy goes in for the first of two bouts he needs for a ticket to London, you would like to think the politics are far from their minds.
IRISH IN ACTION
Today's bouts (semi-finals)
49kg
Paddy Barnes (Ire) v F Pehlivan (Tur) 91kg
Tommy McCarthy v V Cheles (Mol)
69kg
Adam Nolan v I Gheorghe (Rom)
