MAY I suggest that our top sports officials do something about it?
I refer to reports recently circulated that boxing and weightlifting have been removed from the Olympic Games calendar in Los Angeles 2028.
The 2024 Paris Summer Games have yet to begin and here we are talking of scrapping two major events that count among the quadrennial’s centerpiece competitions.
Isn’t weightlifting an original Olympic fare? It was one of 12 events featured when the modern summer spectacle was unveiled in 1896.
Sadly, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) itself is taking the lead in scrapping both disciplines.
Two reasons for the IOC’s shocking action were corruption and doping plaguing both events for years now.
But the usual suspects have always been First World countries like Russia (weightlifting) and some of its fellow former Soviet Union republics like Ukraine and Kazakhstan (boxing).
Said countries have always been singled out as perpetrators of doping scandals in weightlifting, not to mention match-fixing incidents rampant in boxing competitions worldwide.
In fact, just to avoid the twin scandals from happening, the IOC took charge in administering boxing and weightlifting competitions in the July 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Russia escaped being kicked out of the last Games when the IOC agreed to a compromise of not recognizing Russia as an official competitor. The IOC renamed that country’s Olympic movement in Tokyo as the Russian Athletic Federation or something.
The Aiba (International Boxing Federation) was likewise declared off-limits in Tokyo 2020 and the boxing competitions were run by IOC-designated officials in a bid to totally rid the world boxing body of misfits and suspected match-fixers.
Anyway, since the LA Olympiad is still a good seven years away, may I suggest that this early, our boxing association now headed by my kumpadre Ed Picson and the weightlifting group with my buddy Nyuks Puentevella at the helm prod the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) to initiate moves to stop the IOC from cancelling the said events in LA 2028?
I think it’d be a good idea if POC president Bambol Tolentino request the 11-nation Southeast Asia Sports Federation to convene and discuss the matter in a determined bid to save boxing and weightlifting from Olympic extinction.
After all, SEA nations being mostly Third World countries, are never involved in any monkey business on the global stage, their integrity historically beyond reproach.
Punish the guilty. Spare the upright; reward them even.
THAT’S IT Let’s not be overconfident at all times. Wear your face mask, always. The Covid-19 is starting to be naughty and not nice again…Happy New Year!