By Jake Donovan

An appeal filed by the Ukraine Olympic boxing team on behalf of top-seeded middleweight Ievgen Khytro was denied, the AIBA announced Thursday evening.

The scoring in Khytro’s controversial loss to Great Britain’s Anthony Ogogo was questioned after the hosting nation’s fighter was the recipient of a double-countback win in Round of 16 competition. The two fought to an 18-18 tie in a bout featuring greater ebb-and-flow than any other on the day. A countback was ordered, in which the announced score was even at 52-52.

A final tiebreaker came down to who each individual judge had winning the fight. Each member of the five-person panel was required to press either the “red” or “blue” button, to vote for the winning corner. Three of the five voted in favor of “blue,” which advanced Ogogo to the quarterfinals.

The verdict sent the London crowd into a deafening frenzy, but Khytro and Team Ukraine refused to accept the decision. Scoring posted on the official Olympics website suggested that the bout should have never come down to a second tie-breaker, as the way the scores were displayed lent the appearance of a 53-52 win for Khytro.

Clarification was offered by the AIBA. When scores go to countback, the highest and lowest overall judges’ total for each fighter are thrown out, with the remaining three scores tallied. The way the scores are displayed, viewers were lead to believe it was the highest and lowest scores per round which followed the aforementioned format.

“ In accordance to its full commitment for transparency, the International Boxing Association (AIBA) has decided to take the unusual step of revealing the individual scores of Bout #118 of the London 2012 Olympic Games between Ievgen Khytrov (Ukraine, Red) and Anthony Ogogo (Great Britain, Blue),” the organization announced in a statement.

The five judges’ scores are broken down as shown below, along with a detailed explanation offered from the AIBA.

Individual Score

RED : BLUE

RED : BLUE

RED : BLUE

RED : BLUE

RED : BLUE

ROUND 1

2 : 5

2 : 5

3 : 5

3 : 6

4 : 6

ROUND 2

8 : 6

7 : 5

6 : 4

5 : 6

7 : 8

ROUND 3

10 : 7

8 : 3

5 : 6

7 : 7

11 : 8

SUM

20 : 18

17 : 13

14 : 15

15 : 19

22 : 22

According to Appendix L of AIBA Technical & Competition Rules:

"2.1. Per round, each Individual Score is counted.

2.2. The scores in each round are the average of three Judges' score combination which are the closest together called as Similar Scores.

2.3. For each round, the results of the Individual Scores are calculated separately for the red Boxer and the blue Boxer.

2.4. If at the end of a round more than one Similar Score appears, the Trimmed Mean calculation will apply. The Trimmed Mean is when the highest and lowest Individual Scores are taken out and the average of the remaining three Individual Scores is counted."

 

Selected Scores

RED : BLUE

ROUND 1

3 : 5

ROUND 2

7 : 6

ROUND 3

8 : 7

SUM

18 : 18

According to Appendix L of AIBA Technical & Competition Rules:

"4.2 In case of a tie in the Final Scores:

- 4.2.1. First, delete the lowest and highest Judges' total scores in each red and blue corner. Then, the winner will be determined by the total scores of the remaining three Judges of each red and blue corner.

 

 

RED

BLUE

Judge 1

20

18

Judge 2

17

13

Judge 3

14

15

Judge 4

15

19

Judge 5

22

22

SUM

52

52

 

- 4.2.1. Second, in case of a tie after the above process, all five (5) Judges shall be asked to press the button once for the Boxer who has won. The decision is made by the majority of the panel of these five (5) Judges.

The majority of the five (5) Judges was then in favour of Great Britain Anthony Ogogo."

Agogo will now face Stefan Hardel of Germany in the Middleweight quarterfinals on Monday, August 6.

Khytrov was just the second Ukraine fighter eliminated from competition.

Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of Boxingscene.com. Follow Jake on Twitter: @JakeNDaBox