From my earliest years I’ve never been a good loser, so when, after his defeat to a Russian boxer, Michael Conlan shouted “They’re fucking cheats- they’re known for being cheats!” I felt his pain. Besides, how could you not like a lad who tweets Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, with the query “Hey Vlad..How did they charge you, bro??” The boy’s got cojones.
He’s also got boxing talent. Even an ignoramus like myself could tell that Conlan whupped the ass off his opponent, Vladimir Nikitin. Your granny could have told that Conlan whupped Nikitin’s ass. The Russian went off with a face spouting blood, Conlan stood mid-ring giving the finger to the people who voted that he’d lost. Earlier, Katie Taylor in her mild, squeaky-voice way suggested that she thought she’d done enough to win as well. I didn’t see that bout but I did see the Conlan one and the decision stank.
The sport’s governing body, Aiba, has said that fighters tend to blame judges when they lose and have no complaints when they win. There’s probably truth in that. On the other hand, it’s possible that a fighter might lose, blame the judges, and be absolutely correct. That’s what happened yesterday with Conlan.
Should he have used coarse language, levelled charges in the heat of defeat? You bet. Just because you’re pumped full of adrenalin doesn’t mean you’re lying. And just because you swear and give the finger doesn’t mean the occasion didn’t call for both.
Russian sport must be in an appalling state now. There have been athletes banned because of failing drug tests, and now, if Conlan is right, they’re into bribing officials to give verdicts that suit them.
These have not been good Games for Ireland. The O’Donovan brothers were within a whisker of taking the gold in rowing, which made their silver feel a bit second-rate. Annalise Murphy just got pipped to the post and similarly had to be glad she got silver.
Defeat is always hard to take, especially when you’ve been training for years for this moment. But defeat because some officials appear to be involved in corruption stinks to high heaven. Boxing is tarnished, the Games are tarnished. and the next time you watch an amateur bout you’re bound to wonder “Is this fixed?” So not just fucking cheats, Michael – they’re infectious fucking cheats and richly deserved that finger.
It was without doubt the wrong decision. It wasn’t even close even the Russian was surprised he won. At best it was utter incompetence on the judges and at worse full blown corruption.
I understand that a lot of the scoring is subjective but considering nearly EVERY pundit and expert gave the fight to Conlan you have to ask what the judges were watching.
As for how he decided to express his displeasure, while I can’t condone that behaviour I wouldn’t condemn him for it either.
Thousands of hours in the gym, untold miles on the road running, blood, sweat and tears, along with all the time sacrificed for a dream makes losing in such a manner a bitter pill to swallow.
Irish sport has done poorly in this games. Not just the poor performance in the medal haul, but also drug scandals with the boxer and now the Irish IOC president is arrested for illegally selling tickets.
I think they need a full blown investigation after the games in order to ensure there isn’t a deeper problem with corruption in Irish Olympic sport.
Sorry Jude but you need to take the blinkers off. Your first paragraph could unintentionally be the reason some western countries competitors are getting the short end of the stick I.e to continually demonise Russia and its president willy nilly is bound to grate others who don’t have that same animosity to all things Russian. Conlon drawing Putins name into the equation really shows how far western propaganda has worked on the western people. Ian Fleming never even imagined a bad guy as omnipotent as Putin.
Put it simply ‘the whole world’ doesn’t hate Russia no matter what our dumb politicians and ignorant media like to tell us. It is safe to assume a hefty chunk of the world hate the way the west is manufacturing a hatred for all things Russian. So, who knows, in return and in solidarity with them, others within sport are sticking two fingers up at all those western anti Russians and its cheerleaders, that includes Ireland? After all the west did turn this Olympics into a political bashing of Russia exercise. Sad but that’s the reality.
Btw, the lack of criticism at all the other drug takers, especially, those from the western countries, doesn’t go unnoticed in other regions of the world, which again suggests it’s all politics. US sport must be in an appalling state right now too, what with two time banned drug cheat Gatlin represents them in the 100 metres? But shhhhsh don’t mention that. Then we have the ‘all time greatest Olympian’ Phelps spouting his disapproval of the Russians ‘cheats’ participation in this Olympics, allthewhile posting pictures of his arms around Gatlin! Ffs you couldn’t make this crap up.
One more thing, a British cyclist broke the rules of doping by missing 3 official tests. She was officially suspended from partaking in these games but alas somehow or another she managed to overturn her suspension and is presently masquerading as an honest athlete in Rio. Go figure. Tell me again which English former Tory MP is head of the International Association of Athletics Federation? That’s right, the boul Seb Coe. ‘Politics and sport don’t mix’ but they do.
Barnes struggled but won Katie Taylor won well Conlan won all three rounds so Michael was right to fuck and blind. Even the Brits in 2012 were fairer to the Irish and that is saying something!!!! Corruption reigns supreme. The ticket issue is another problem?
language please Jude, hope ye get a long penance after confessions !
Don’t like boxing, and never watch it, but in the Olympics it just seems to have got curiouser and curiouser!
None of the Russians, of the few who were even allowed on the premises, have been considered flavour of the games, so the IOC haven’t been bending the rules in favour of Putin or Nikitin.
But Paddy Barnes lost his bout on a split decision, when some thought the decision should have gone in his favour.
Katie Taylor certainly thought she had been hard done by, and her team backed her up in this opinion.
Now Michael Conlan got the shock of his life when he thought he had trounced Vladimir, to be told it was a unanimous decision against him.
Maybe if they had been dining in the GB team canteen they would have breezed through their heats to gain a few golds!
Just curious – has anyone (apart from the ousted Russians) tested positive in any of the sports, or are we expected to believe that all competitors are cleaner than clean, for the first Olympics ever?
Fair play to you Jude callin it as it was and is. I know Michael won all three rounds with the third one closer than first two. I’ll ask Micky Gallagher ( Irish judge out there ) on his return to Omagh what he made of it. Regarding his language, to hell with the politically correct brigade. He can curse and swear all he wants. He trained to box and compete, not set himself up as a role model. All that role model stuff is fabricated and perpetuated by media. If that’s the worst thing he ever does in his life, he may well become a saint. Nolan went off on a bloody tangent this morning instead of concentrating on the injustice of the boxing decision.
Cheating bastards. Fair play to Conlon.
PS – It seems the IOC have now suspended boxing judges involved in dodgy decisions, presumably including that of Michael Conlon, but those dodgy decisions will stand, without any possibility of appeal.
Presumably they believe these judges made wrong decisions, so how can it be right to deny victims of this dodgy decisions the chance to have verdicts rectified?
The IOC stinks!
Alas, Esteemed Blogmeister, the portents were there: take the surname alone of the Russian opponent.
-Nikitin.
As soon as the name flashed up on the screen, the Perkin’s inner Olympic oracle smelt danger. Nikitin can only mean one thing.
-Smokey.
In their hit song, named for the eponymous Alice, a musical group of the same name, Smokey, referenced the unusual time span of ’24 years’. Seems like the lead singer had lived beside A for that length of time.
But, long before that, there were only portents of doom to come in the nations’ living rooms.
While the silky ring-stinger Michael Conlan (24) was blessed with a nigh perfect DNA for a dornalai / boxer – son of a Belfast mother and a Dublin father – therein lurked an omen in itself.
For Michael’s father, John, just does not just hail from Dublin but from Dublin 12 in general and Drimnagh in particular. Drimnagh, of course, is home to the same boxing club which so far has been the only Irish one to strike gold in male boxing in 120 years of sparring, in the stocky shape of a ginger-cropped Michael Carruth.
(One indeed has vivid memories of sloping off one lunch time from one’s, erm, professional duties in 1992 to attend a specially arranged box-off in the Ringside Club on the South Circular Road to see which welterweight would represent Ireland at Barcelona . The boxer who lost narrowly to the future Olympic champion that lunchtime was the Wexican welterweight and current coach of the USA team, Billy Walsh).
Drimnagh was originally known as Crumlin North until it eventually achieved parochial independence back in the 1940s. Relationships have never been entirely cordial between the two political parishes since that fissure.
One major marrowbone of contention between the two geographical entities remains the Crumlin Childrens’ Hospital. A superb facility. The only problem is that it is not actually located in Crumlin, but rather Drimnagh. In fact it is located on the same Drimnagh thoroughfare, Cooley Road, where two former Irish champions, used to reside: Eamon Coghlan, athlete and Frankie Kerr, boxer. (Frankie, father of Brian, was a native of Belfast).
So, for those observing yesterday’s bantamweight bout between the Irishman and the Russian and with a particular parochial axe to grind, they might be excused if they saw things through a particular prism. And instead, witnessed a re-enactment of an old Cooley Mountain saga, as old as that of Cuchullain v Ferdia itself, the pair of Hiberno heavyweights who put up their myths all those aeons ago.
For Crumlin, read Kremlin.
One might well forgive Michael C for suffering a post-decision ‘riastradh’.
Back in the fabulous Fifties the athletics world witnessed the emergence of the unprecedented Press Brothers of the Soviet Union. Between them, Tamara and Indira, smashed no less than 26 (!) world records. Revisionists of the Russian running culture now claim that (gasp) the Press Brothers were actually the (gulp) Press Sisters !
This is akin to asserting that the Irish Press (before its demise in 1995) was nearer in political identity to the Irish Independent than to its original incarnation in 1931 !
All in all, Rio could have been worse for Team Ireland. Considering that PB did achieve his PB (Paddy Barnes and Personal Best respectively) and also, considering that the most common surname in Brasil (as in Portugal) is da Silva it ought not be too surprising if da Silva is our medal haul for Rio 2016.
Though a special certificate of commendation is surely due to former Senator and Sindoist Shane de Rossa : for (1) disproving the old adage that ‘Brazil is where the nuts come from as distinct from going to’.
News is currently filtering through that, alas, SdR is hightailing it home to Dublin, with Rugby Public School accent intacta (de rigeur for a Minister of Sport in the current coalition). Pursued, oddly enough, by a plague of zikas, not.
Perhaps – Dia idir sinn agus an t-olc / God between us and all hernias ! – his eureka moment resembled that experienced by the Perkin’s inner peripatetic person some fifteen years ago or so in Rio.
Having already been there and done that with the bronze and da silva sights of the January Riverdance City one headed for the gold medal sight. Duly attired in the T-shirt with the Maracana on the front of the T-shirt and a Favela on the back, one headed down the promenade of the Copacabana at twilight time.
One hadn’t got to stroll too far before being arrested, oops, one’s sight was arrested by a sight unusual. At least as far as the Perkin’s heretofore sheltered existence was concerned.
For there, perched on the bonnet of a parked fin-winged automobile, were anything up to nineteen abandoned handbags.
It wasn’t till one looked up and glanced across the street that the riddle of the handbags, if not the sands, was solved. For there, squatting on the steps of a large public building of sorts was a parliamentary assembly of local ladies of the night. The whole enchilada was in various degrees of undress, each one of the glamorous agglomeration more garish, if possible, than the next.
Judging by the shrillness of the raised voices they were not happy campers. In fact, they exuded a distinct penumbra of not being at all numbered among the best pleased. To all e. and purposes they could well have been in the processes of experiencing their collective nineteenth nervous breakdown.
Goddess alone knows just how many of the nineteen naughty ladies of el noche were lady boys, not .
Whatever slight temptation the Perkin may have felt to, erm, ‘borrow’ one of the handbags was quickly erased by this quite frightening sight. Usain Bolt / UB 40 would have had some record to smash, fifteen years down the track, otherwise.
One profoundly hopes Minister of Sport Shane de Rossa was not confronted by a similar predicament. Causing him to beat the retreat hasty.
PS De Rossa ? Who the possum is De Rossa ?
It is good that young Conlan let off steam about corruption in amateur boxing. Sportmanship does not mean standingly by while cheats prevail. Importantly, he opened the floodgates of unease at how Olympic Boxing is being run. As a result, a lot of highly respected people in international boxing, who might not otherwise have spoken out against AIBA corruption, are now doing so,
As regards Michael’s language, I’m a prim old lady who usually deplores swearing. However I must allow that there can be no more effective way of expression intense negative feeling. I once used the F word myself when I stupidly drove my car into a ditch.
Michael Conlan was deeply wronged by the judge’s decision. He was absolutely right to swear and to accuse the corrupt AIBA elite who betrayed him and other boxers who were cheated out of their wins. He was the outright winner of his fight but saw corrupt judges flush 4 years of his life’s achievement down the drain.
I cheered him on while he defeated that clumsy flat footed Russian and cheered him again when he told the world, with full justification, what he thought of the result and of the AIBA. He had good reason to swear and his wonderful foulmouthed denunciation expressed exactly what most of us were thinking here back home. If children were listening, they heard strong language being used appropriately against corruption and greed, used as it ought to be used.
I watched the Conlan fight and I couldn’t believe what I witnessed. I also watched the Paddy Barnes fight and though it was a much closer contest than the Conlan fight, I still think Paddy won. Paddy definitely lost the first round, he won the second but he certainly won the third too, the third round the Judges gave to his Spanish opponent. The strange thing is Paddy won the 2nd round but yet he lost the 3rd round even though he did better…..
I couldn’t watch the Katie Taylor fight but I was shocked to hear she had lost, really shocked. This girl has won around 20 Gold Medals in Boxing, she’s already won Gold at the Olympics previously where she stumped her opponents. Almost every competition she enters she wins, I think this may be the first time she has never won a medal. Michael Conlan mentions Katie Taylor in his angry rant to RTE, where he says that Katie Taylor should’ve won her fight as well and that the Judges were corrupt. I agree wholeheartedly.
Some people will say “But if it was Conlan who got beat but the Judges found in his favour then you wouldn’t be complaining”. Well maybe not but I would still be suspicious of the Judges because if they ruled against a boxer who should’ve won then obviously I would be worried if they do it to a boxer representing my country, which has been the case, not only in Conlan’s fight but maybe also in Paddy Barnes and Katie Taylor’s fights.
It isn’t only the Irish boxers that have been cheated at the Olympics this year but also the Kazakh boxing team. I watched the boxing match between Russia and Kazakhstan in the 90kg weight division. The Kazakh boxer completely hammered the Russian, they literally had to stop the fight for a while so the doctor could check out the Russian boxer to see if he could continue. It really did look like the Russian was going to be knocked out, that’s how badly he was performing but he went the full 3 rounds. When the bout was over, despite the Kazakh boxer clearly winning, the Gold Medal was awarded to the Russian. The Kazakh boxer couldn’t believe he had lost. The crowds were booing, even during the medal ceremony…..
But judging how Russia’s neighbours are on an arse licking exercise with their very large neighbour (Azerbaijan’s President demanded an inquiry into why Azerbaijan didn’t reward Russia points in the Eurovision song contest 2 years ago…..) I doubt very much the Kazakhstan Government will be complaining about their boxer losing a Gold medal to Russia.
The Olympics is corrupt. Of course it is, you really have to be very naïve to believe its truly fair and balanced. I’m not saying its corrupt in every sport but its corrupt where it matters, where it means something. Sport tournaments like these are all extremely political. Do you honestly believe countries like the USA, Russia, China, etc would risk embarrassing themselves on the World Stage by not winning a medal? Of course they wouldn’t, so they bribe, they drug their athletes, they spend millions upon millions on training them, they pay off other athletes, etc. Its the same with the FIFA World Cup. How can a country like Qatar, which is not even a third the size of the North of Ireland, host the 2022 FIFA World Cup? Seriously, this country literally has a far larger immigrant population than ethnic Qatari’s, its ridiculous. England and South Korea lost out to hosting the World Cup 2022 to QATAR, how is that even possible? England invented Soccer and South Korea hosted an extremely successful World Cup in 2002 (the last time Ireland was at the World Cup, they reached the last 16) but yet they lost to Qatar?? Its obvious that Oil Money bought votes for Qatar.
One thing I hate about international sports is when people say countries with small populations cant beat countries with large populations. That’s ridiculous. You often hear that in reference to soccer. This isn’t a lottery where every 1,000,000th baby born will be a star soccer player or a star athlete. Star Athletes/footballers are made, not born. It all comes down to the determination of the individual and the proper facilities being funded by the Government, that’s how medals are won….well, that’s assuming Judges aren’t corrupt and everything is fair and balanced, of course….
Update:
Russian Boxer who Conlan fought may not be fit to fight his opponent due to his injuries and may have to pull out of Thursdays Silver medal game. So he was beaten so bad by Conlan that he may not be fit to fight on due to his injuries? but yet the Judges thought he won against Conlan? This all stinks of corruption….Does this also mean that Conlan can be reinstated?…
http://www.joe.ie/sport/report-vladimir-nitikin-withdraws-from-olympic-semi-final-with-injuries-sustained-against-michael-conlan/557056
According to this BBC Newsreport, the Judges in Conlans fight “will not be working at these Olympics again”.
And the excuses are coming, they are blaming it on the new scoring system….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/37100323
Funny how they cant appeal the Judges decision, isn’t it?…..
FIFA, A Rod, Lance Armstrong, most weight lifters , many Russians, East Germans back in the day, figure skating judges, and on and on.
I’ve been a sports enthusiast most of my life but sadly its all gotten the stench of a cess pit over the years.