Mira Potkonen won Katie Taylor in the semi-finals, but according to a report on corruption in Olympic boxing, a special system saved Finland’s only Olympic medal.
5.10. 20:26 | Updated 5.10. 22:27
Rion Canadian lawyer graduates from 2016 Olympic boxing judging scandal Richard McLaren under investigation. According to the study, there is a strong suspicion of result manipulation in at least eleven matches.
After the Games, the International Boxing Federation (Aiba) shelved all the judges for the Rio Games. Later, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) threatened to shelf boxing entirely from the Olympics.
In the end, the shelf was for Aiba, as the tournament was organized by a boxing organization founded by the IOC.
Eleven in addition to the suspicious match, the report mentions fifteen matches with “potential” for manipulation.
One of these matches was the women’s 57-60 kg semi-final Mira Potkonen and Irish Katie Taylorin between.
The match ended with Potkonen winning by a scattered 2–1, ie Potkonen survived the semi-finals and took the Olympic bronze after the semi-final loss.
The report explains how all the votes in the match were distributed. In Rio, as is usually the case in amateur matches, there were five judges, of whom the final points were drawn by the points given by three judges.
Here Potpot got good luck: one of the judges gave the score to Potkonen, one to Taylor and one equalized the score, but he considered Potkonen the winner. If the points of the two judges who survived the draw had been included, the match would have ended in Taylor’s 3-2 victory.
However, the outcome of the match was not counted as manipulation, but was a point system that allowed the outcome.
Correction 5.10.2021 at 21.38: The ingress of the story initially erroneously mentioned that it was a semi-final. The match was the semi-finals.
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