Among the 40 boxing officials invited to the Paris Olympics was a Lincoln man who grew up boxing in Lincoln clubs. His father was a boxer, too. Nebraska Public Media's Dale Johnson sat down with Doug Emery, who took off the gloves at the end of his career to become a very well-respected international boxing official.
Dale Johnson: How many Olympics have you been involved in?
Doug Emery: This is the second one. The first time was being an assistant in helping keep time. This one was actually evaluating the judges.
Johnson: And you've judged the judges, correct? Tell me what that involves.
Emery: It is us scoring the bout almost like we would score from their position. So let's just say it was a very, very close round, I would put in that I accepted nine, 10, or 10, nine open, meaning either the red winning very close, or blue winning very close. But if it's a clear winner for the red and somebody voted for the blue, then they obviously get marked down because we weren't scoring it that way. We were scoring it for the red, the obvious winner.
Johnson: In Paris, boxing officials were in charge of 235 bouts over 13 days. You told me it was the cleanest Olympics in 36 years.
Emery: That's what we were told. That was partly because of the job that the evaluators were doing. It was never the close bouts that were the problem, because close bouts, you and I could see it differently. We're talking about that obvious clinker that, that one where everybody who saw it knows that the person they declared the winner was not the winner. We had none of those. Well, the only boxing question I read about centered around gender identities of a female Algerian boxer and a female Chinese Taipei boxer both failed a gender test at the World Championships in 2023. Both have been competing as women since 2018. Both took gold in Paris. Did your fellow officials, or to what extent did your fellow officials talk about this one? I think there were some, especially female officials, that were upset about the whole idea, but we made it pretty clear from our perspective, that that decision was way over our pay grade. That that decision was made by the IOC, and the IOC would have to live with those results. I have to be frank with you, I don't know enough about the testing to know, but there's some other history that was involved. The governing body that made the declaration that these were two females has been kicked out of the Olympics. And so there's some bad blood that went back and forth. I'm not sure everything that was being published was on the up and up.
Johnson: Will this have anything to do with what I hear may be an absence of boxing in the 2028, Olympic Games?
Emery: The only involvement is there has to be a new governing body. The Olympics in Tokyo and the Olympics in Paris, the boxing was taken over by the International Olympic Committee and put under a group called first the Road to Tokyo and then the Road to Paris. That was a bunch of people like me and Price Waterhouse who put in place all of the protocols to make sure that we were doing things safely and that we were doing things so that we were trying to guarantee the correct winner. That was offered to the previous governing body. They said they weren't interested, and so the IOC said, ‘”You're out. We're not going to ever consider you to be a governing body again, and now it's up to the world to decide who the new governing body will be.” It's going to be difficult, but I know that the Olympic Committee is going to do their best because the fastest selling event sell outs for the last eight Olympics have been boxing, and we're boxing in the United States. You know that NBC and the IOC would love to see boxing be in there. I'd love to see boxing be in there.
Johnson: What would that do for the future of boxing if, in four years, it doesn't exist at the Olympics?
Emery: Probably it drives it more into the alleyways. There’s still going to be events. They won't be certified events, and they won't be events where you have trained people who are protecting the boxers and trained people who are actually scoring the bout and so that you get fair decisions.
Johnson: Five medals for Uzbekistan, all gold, five medals for China, three, gold, two, silver, one medal, a bronze for the United States. Is the world that much better than the United States?
Emery: No, I think things have changed, and the United States hasn't been able to catch up. They will. This was the worst Olympics we've had in a while, and it was the same coaching staff. So sometimes you just get caught. One of the things about it, there is no seating in this so you could be the one of the best boxers in the world and draw the next best boxer in the world. One of you is out, and you're not going to medal. USA, Russia and Cuba all used to get their entire team in. Now that doesn't happen. You have to go to a qualifier. Our qualifier was in Pan American Games, and it was almost seven months ago. So we may have kids who are better now than those kids who actually got to go. And so the days, I think, when you're going to see the whole team getting in are gone. Cuba only got five in, but they don't have any female boxing, or they're just starting female boxers. So there's way behind. And certainly United States is behind in female boxing. Canada had boxing 30 years before we even thought of female boxers. Johnson: Doug Emery joining me for the conversation. Olympic boxing, the subject on Nebraska Public Media. I'm Dale Johnson.