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The 42 Editor’s note: This article by Gavin Cooney forms part of The 42′s subscriber-only coverage of the Paris 2024 Olympics, with unique insights and fresh perspectives on the biggest stories every single day. If you’d enjoy more great sportswriting like this, you can sign up here for a free one-month trial to The 42.
THE ANNOUNCER YELLED rouge but still boxing will not be flushed with embarrassment.
What hope has a sport so stubbornly resistant to self-awareness as this?
Daina Moorehouse strode into the lions’ den in Paris, booed as she arrived to fight France’s Wassile Lkhardiri in front of a raucous, thirsty crowd. But at first Moorehouse was impervious and then she was imperious as, to use an old Michale Conlan quote, she boxed the ears off Lkhardiri.
The first warning sign was that Moorehouse only took the first round 3-2 on the judges’ cards. She had utterly dominated it and yet could only earn a split call. It was at that point that Zaur Antia knew what was coming. Daina Moorehouse had been slapped with a hometown tariff so punishing that her only path into the quarter-finals was via knockout.
Moorehouse continued to control the second round, unloading flurries up close while also managing to stay out of range, rippling her opponent’s face with one punch so clean it sent her staggering backwards. The judges promptly gave Lkhardiri the round, 4-1.
Worse was to come in the final round. Moorehouse continued to box smartly but she also inflicted some hurt, scrambling Lkhardiri’s brain to the point she once looked to the Irish corner for instruction. Moorehouse finished with a brutal final flurry that put an exclamation point on her night’s work.
And yet.
The judges scored the final round 4-1 to the French girl, and Moorehouse lost on all but one of the cards. The judges from Kazakhstan, Russia, and Canada scored it 29-28 to Lkhardiri, while the Azeri judge scored it 30-27, meaning he scored every round against Moorehouse.
The Irish corner erupted in rage, waving his hands to the crowd to dismiss the verdict while also gesturing angrily at the sky. The Irish boxers in the crowd waved their arms too, but nobody was listening.
“A disgrace,” fumed one member of the Irish delegation, as another shouted that “they are destroying the Olympics”.
“You watch boxing?”, Zaur Antia asked the press, rhetorically. “Anyone with eyes could see it was 5-0 every round but I knew after it was 3-2 in the first round.” He then strode off, flinging his arms in the air in that strange mixture of resigned seething to which he has been driven too often in his time with Ireland.
Moorehouse took a few minutes before speaking to the media, and she cut a figure of almost abnormal calm. Perhaps we are all at the point of resignation now.
“I didn’t feel like when I was in there that I was losing,” she said. “When you know you’re getting beaten you’re getting beaten, but I definitely didn’t feel like I was losing.
“I knew they were going to boo me. I knew there would have been screams for her but I just knew if I performed and took it out of the judges’ hands that I would have got the decision.
“I still did perform but didn’t take it out of the judges’ hands.
“I definitely feel like I didn’t take any big shots, even the shots I did take were just stupid jabs or like a stupid little hook over the top.
“But, I don’t know, I definitely thought I was landing the harder shots. I was the busier boxer.
“I pushed on in that third round thinking surely I have this. I just went for it but I think I lost the third round 4-1.”
The team’s high performance director, Tricia Heberle, sidled over to stand by Moorehouse with tears forming in her eyes.
“What did you see today?”, she asked us. “You have been watching boxing a long, long time. I am nothing but proud of this athlete. She completely controlled that fight. She moved the boxer around, she found openings, made great punches: head punches, body punches, combinations. That’s what I saw. I am extremely proud of her.”
She then confirmed that Ireland have no mechanism by which they can lodge a complaint about judging.
Last night’s decision against Aoife O’Rourke was questionable, as were refereeing calls during Grainne Walsh’s defeat earlier in the week. Anger then was leavened by the fact that neither O’Rourke nor Walsh performed to their capability, but Moorehouse could not have done any more.
Boxing is fighting for its place at the LA Games in 2028, and its potential exclusion from the programme would be a disaster for Irish sport and the people and communities served by boxing.
But the Games’ great recidivists are at it again. Rio was supposed to be the nadir from which things would improve. The IOC cut out the IBA and arranged boxing themselves, and while Tokyo marked an improvement, this was the wretched stuff of nights we have seen too often before.
This wasn’t even Lkhardiri’s first larceny against Moorehouse, which came at the European Games last year. Antia was left furiously remonstrating with the judges and referee on that occasion, too.
“I don’t know”, said Moorehouse when asked what tonight means for boxing’s hopes of being an Olympic sport beyond next weekend.
“I actually don’t know what to say. Some judging is okay, some judging is not. Some referees are just… I think you definitely have to take a look at the judges and the refs.”
That is boxing’s quadrennial refrain.
We might not hear it in Los Angeles, though, because there may be no boxers left to sing it.
Written by Gavin Cooney and originally published on The 42 whose award-winning team produces original content that you won’t find anywhere else: on GAA, League of Ireland, women’s sport and boxing, as well as our game-changing rugby coverage, all with an Irish eye. Subscribe here.
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How about debating medical card holders not pension holders paying 10 euro per doctor visit. When your paying 55 quid per visit and you can’t see a doctor for 3 days because he’s booked solid with medical card holders with colds and aches blocking up the system.
If they were charged they wot be visiting until they need to like the rest of us.
@Funfair: that’s a question for the government to answer not a trade union conference
@Boganity: why is a trade union conference debating our drink driving laws then ?
@Funfair: because doctors are reminicing the old irish local junta system. The doctor, the priest and the garda seargent that kept all the peasants in their place. They still have the ear of government and think by virtue of a few years in trinity they should set policy. Drink driving needs to be tackled, but we have a government getting paid to do that.
@Funfair: it’s not pension card holder or medical card holder blocking up the waiting room..but women with there kids .kids with nothing wrong with them..except for a cough or runny nose..
@mad_fluffy: which are mostly medical card holders …
Why make these laws & then debate them, drink driving should be a ban at all times. People know the law & some people are willing to drink & drive. If they take the chance they should be prepared to take the punishment!
@Liam John Bradshaw: and what’s it got to do with doctors or their trade union conference
@Boganity: they brought it up
All EU countries ban drink drivers – and we should be no different.
Being tired behind the wheel is even worse than having one drink ,twelve hour night shifts ,!
@Gerard Heery: has this scientific finding of yours been peer reviewed ?
@Boganity: poking figurative holes in someone’s argument would be best backed up by an informed rebuttal of your own, Bog…
@Gerard Heery: as someone who works 12hr night shifts I completely agree..i put it in the same bracket as having about 6-7 drinks
@Boganity: it happens all the time but theres no prove ,only to say must of being speeding at three in the morning.
@Boganity: ok I will say in the early Ninetys worked shift and left work completely knackered after 12 hours as did other workers on the shift I’ll leave at that,
Ross should put more effort into enforcing the laws already in place. I’m all for zero tolerance, but what’s the point in this legislation when the guards don’t enforce the current laws with any real regularity (not in rural areas anyway). Not to detract from the issue of rural isolation (not that it’s any excuse for drink driving) but Ross needs to look outside the pale and sort out some decent rural transport links. But, knowing him, that’s probably outside his remit…
@Kian: one death saved is enough to justify the ban, 35 that’s a no brainer
@Boganity: it Is, but he’d save even more lives with better enforcement
@Boganity: the roads are busier than ever a road fatality is enviable.. nothing can avoid that
As the journal fact find article pointed out it uncertain whether the ‘lives saved’ would ever result in any of this kind of action. We have to remember we are addressing issues so infintesmally small in quantity we couldn’t't legislate to eradicate. Fatal outcomes represent 0.0000007% of road activity. Maybe concentrating on mental health issues would have greater effect on society. But sure the corporate which is the RSA, can’t get revenue from that.
@Martin Critten: so what’s an acceptable number of deaths from driving over the limit ?
When did doctors become law makers!
There should be breathalyser kits in each car. So drivers can test themselves before they drive. So no excuses.
If you fail both blood and urine tests then obviously drink drivers should be band. End of story, otherwise why bother testing in first place.
Like to remind Mr Ross and his supporters that text driving has been proven to be more dangerous than drink driving. So why not give them an auto ban? Or what about banning all drivers for distractive driving?
What’s to debate? Automatic ban is a good strategy. Revisit impact in five years to renew or abandon.
Funny thing about all these new laws ,if Kim Un Jong sets off a nuke these laws won’t mean a thing they’ll be alot more worrying issues come to mind like we’re did I put my 1995 iodine tablet.
have your say