Since the leak of the famous McLaren report – on suspicion of corruption in the field of Olympic boxing at the Rio 2016 Games – Great Britain has demanded justice. Joe Joyce, in particular, claims the title that Tony Yoka blew him away.
A large system of cheating and corruption organized within the AIBA, the International Amateur Boxing Federation, during the Rio Olympics in 2016, this is what the McLaren report would highlight – named after the sleuth originally the Russian doping scandal at the 2014 Olympics which, debauched by the new president of AIBA, recently issued a 152-page report allegedly damning for former federal pundits, referees and some boxers.
In the viewfinder of this report – and why the leak of the said conclusions had the effect of a bomb Thursday in the British press – the Olympic heavyweight final in particular between Tony Yoka and Joe Joyce. A fight which among others would include certain irregularities according to Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren. ” It’s sad to see corruption in any sport but especially in boxing, the sport I love. I really believe that I was the winner of the fight against Tony Yoka and that I deserve the gold medal “The 36-year-old Londoner wrote on social media this Friday.
Weird meetings every morning in Rio
Five years after the Rio final, Joyce says she consulted the McLaren report and ” found that corruption impacted the result for the gold medal in the fight against Tony Yoka. » « If there has been corruption, and it seems that this is the case, I trust the AIBA and the IOC to ensure sporting fairness and that I will be awarded the gold medal. “, He concludes, while suggesting that the case could quickly switch to legal ground.
Quoted by 20 Minutes, Kevinn Rabaud, the DTN (national technical director) of the French boxing federation at the time of the facts, refuses to believe in these small arrangements denounced in half-words. ” I invite you to watch the fight. The English should just wonder about their tactical choices. It was a very close fight, and Tony’s strategy was best suited to win. It was not his finest boxing, but it was the one he had to face this opponent to make him thwart. I was with Alexis Vastine in 2008… Concerning the final of Yoka, I do not see how one can speak today of corruption or of theft. »
Among the damning testimonies raised by McLaren, that of the former Vietnamese official Trong Vuong Nghia, who ensures that the judges, every morning in Rio, reviewed the fights of the day and defined in advance the color of the winning boxer in the event duel disputed. The final between Joyce and Yoka, indeed, was close. From there to proving any influence or corruption, there is a step that Richard McLaren himself, in the speech, struggles to take. Suffice to say that Tony Yoka’s gold medal, at this stage, is not really threatened.
Read also:Scandal: Yoka stripped of his Olympic title?Yoka, the serious suspicions are confirmed
