Cuban boxers failed to win a gold medal at an Olympics for the first time in 20 years. Cuba won four golds in each of the last three Olympic editions and seven at Barcelona in 1992, but boycotted the 1988 and 1984 Games. The poor showing is further evidence that defections are seriously hampering the Communist nation's boxing team.
Not neccessarily. They still sntached 8 medals, and were sometimes done harshly (the fact that China won so many perhaps is no coincidence). Still, I saw a few boxers that showed great skills.
The Cubans lost at least two of their best guys due to defections, didn't they? Seems like a lot of novices were on this years team. Probably by 2012, they'll be back to dominating , especially considering that the US seems to have lost interst in boxing altogether.
Still did pretty well. Their prep was hurt by pulling out of the world championships. I dont think Cuban amatuer success is going to diminish anytime soon.
These were the worst olympics when it came to Boxing, the judging was a discrase to the sport of Boxing. My only hope is that the Britains get them back in 2012. Everyone said the same thing about the judging.
Honestly I think most decisions went the right way. The current system is not perfect but its less open to corruption than the previous one. Plus officials can go back and see if a certain judge was pressing the button to much or not enough. At least they have hard some evidence to keep judges in check. My main problem is that even though a fight may appear close the scores may not always reflect that. And if a fighter knows he is a long way behind, which he would because the points are displayed, that affects his gameplan. Instead of boxing smart and calm, a boxer who is behind will get desperate and leave himself open to counters. Whereas a fighter ahead will hold, run and do whatever it takes to protect his lead. One thing that needs a clean up is the reffing. How many times do you have to warn a guy for holding before you take a point off? So what if it will be unpopular, its a refs job to referee by the rules and I did not always see that happening. The ref who ref'd the bout when the samoan guy got badly hurt had no idea and a few others made glaring mistakes that even the commetators were baffled about.
Five - Lara, Rignodeaux (who was kicked off the team when he tried to defect), Solis, Barthelemy and Gamboa. Still, the Cubans probably would have won a gold or two if the judges didn't have their heads up their asses.
No, it's also the judges. It was clear that they were scoring differently for some fighters than others. They were underscoring everyone, but they seemed to be underscoring the Cubans, Russians, Americans, and any opponent of the Chinese more than the others.
Glad to read one person posted the preferential treatment given to Chinese boxers over the opponents representing other countries. The Cubano boxer's (especially) who are highly trained, skilled boxers did not stand a chance set up by the Olympic games comission to score. Not one single gold medal? After years of winning them in the Olympic games. Politics, politics?
I dont think it had to do anything with cubans... the americans also struggled with a population of 300 million... the scoring system at the boxing olympics has become a joke... its going through serious talks of changing its ways... its keeping good prospects out of it also, because even trainers think is a real bad system... I remember trinidads dad took him off and even cotto got beaten and eventually got his rematch in the pros... body punching is not even credited, when it has become a major force in the pros as of lately...
Indeed. I seen people get hit with combination and not have it scored after the first couple of days i stopped watching it.
