(SEPT 12) The boxing tournament in the 2016 Olympics is gone but NOT forgotten.

The Russians won’t forget it, neither will those from Uzbekistan, Cuba and France nor will boxers from Kazakhstan, the United States, Canada and Ireland and one or two other countries?

Who will forget the prominent part the Referees and Judges and indeed some of the AIBA’s own officials, played in many dramatic moments, In AND Out of the Ring?

The “no appeals allowed” system recently introduced brought howls of protest from many quarters ,so here on WBAN we were interested to see what the AIBA themselves would be their ‘headline’ act.

The AIBA PR machine though has taken the unique opportunity to shower praise on the International Boxing Association (AIBA) – or in other words - themselves!

The headline proudly declared :

‘AIBA and its President Dr. Ching-Kuo Wu praised by International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach for remarkable success of the Boxing Tournament at the XXXI Olympiad Rio de Janeiro’.  Link to story

All very positive so one eagerly looked at the actual Press Release itself, wondering what Dr.Th omas Bach who had been present at some of the bouts that created the greatest controversy would say about the AIBA’s “remarkable success”?

The letter, which was indeed penned from the I.O.C’s Presidential HQ in Switzerland is reproduced for your benefit so you can point us in the ‘right direction’ for despite close scrutiny, we seem to have missed the relevant bits first time round and tenth time round.

Page One was a ‘routine standard’ letter sent to all the IOC’s International Federations(IFs) with no mention of AIBA or Dr. Wu so we assumed that page 2 would be well worth waiting for – we quickly spotted the letters ‘AIBA’ in the short paragraph and felt like we’d ‘struck Gold’ but alas again it was just the organisations initials – again replaced by those of one of the other International Federations (IFs) in the letter they received. Notably Dr Bach addressed his communication to Mr Ching-Kuo Wu.

So effectively the AIBA’s PR machine has swung into action and either (a): attributed to Dr.Thomas Bach words he never used or (b) failed to include an additional page that Dr.Bach sent to Mr Ching-Kuo Wu and him alone. Not on one boxing site has such a letter of praise been seen.

Hardly complying with the spirit of the Olympic Games and likely to be in breach of either IOC or AIBA charter. In sporting parlance deserving of a YELLOW card at least if not a RED CARD, or an apology.

We now look forward to the follow up “Thank You” letter from ‘Mr Ching-Kuo Wu to Dr.Bach thanking him for such a lovely letter of ‘praise’ – in addition of course to copy of the actual page which included the phrase mentioned in the AIBA headline Press Release namely:

‘AIBA and its President Dr. Ching-Kuo Wu praised by International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach for remarkable success of the Boxing Tournament at the XXXI Olympiad Rio de Janeiro’.

Watch this space!