[quote="verballistic]
most european nations (russia being the exception...like cuba their system is a well-run assembly line) have boxers who are
generally superior to latin american boxers at weights above 141 pounds, but once you get to 132 and below, latin american fighters do increasingly better as the weights get lighter!! so what would be wrong with giving the euros more qualifying spots in the higher weights and giving the
latin americans & asians more qualifying spots in the lower weight classes? i think they may be already doing that, but clearly those numbers of qualifying spots are out of whack right now as evidenced by the fact that for 2008 games, europeans have more entrants than either americas, asia or africa at 106, 112, 119 and 125 pounds!! even though the euros may be doing better NOW in those weight classes as amateurs, the current system has a built-in bias that EXCLUDES latin americans (and to a lesser extent asians & africans) from the ENTRY LEVEL tourneys such as world junior & world cadet (under-17) championships---as detailed in the above post which you conveniently ignored!!
i'll quote the most relevant portion right here:[/quote]
NUMBER OF NON-CUBAN LATIN AMERICAN BOXERS WHO COMPETED AT WORLD CADET & WORLD JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIPS IN THIS CENTURY:
2007 WORLD CADET=3
2006 WORLD CADET=0...ZERO...NADA...NIL
2006 WORLD JUNIOR=3
2005 WORLD CADET=10
2004 WORLD JUNIOR=9
2003 WORLD CADET=1 MEDALIST (LACKING FULL RESULTS)
2002 WORLD JUNIOR=25 (HELD IN CUBA)
2002 WORLD JUNIOR=2 MEDALISTS (LACKING FULL RESULTS)
2001 WORLD CADET=0...ZERO...NADA...NIL
2000 WORLD JUNIOR=0...ZERO...NADA...NIL
world cadet (under-17) championships have been held 6 times, with ALL 6 of them HELD IN EUROPE!!
if european amateurs are doing better than latin americans in the weight classes below 141 pounds, it is at least partially due to the fact that latin americans are being EXCLUDED (perhaps not intentionally, but rather negligently) from the above entry level world tourneys, which gives them one more significant reason (the other being poverty) to turn professional at a young age with little realistic hope of ever winning the much-coveted olympic medal that would increase their marketability as pros!!
[/quote]
1. At the 2007 World Championships (which were an Olympic qualification tourney) Europe won 8 medals below 141, Americas 2. Out of those 8, 6 were non Russian. This means that non Russian Europeans were 300% as succesful as non Cuban Americans in direct competition against each other.
2. Referring to 1., the number of participating fighters at cadet world championships is really irrelevant to the fact that Latin American fighters fail to beat European fighters in qualification, when faced directly against each other. Which leads me to...
3. Participation in World Championship tournaments, be it Cadet, Junior or Senior is
open. This means that individual countries
decide for themselves who and how many they want to send. Therefore, it has nothing to do with bias, but each individual country's priorities. You have to participate to win.
in case you wish to challenge my assertion that latin americans provide far more world-class boxers than euros do at 132 pounds and below, one need only look at the pro ranks, where latin american & asian fighters leave their european peers in the dust, both in quantity & quality!! wlad sidorenko is the only european so far in 21st century to make significant world impact as a pro at weights of 135 pounds & below, and there are numerous latin american & asian pros who are at least as good as sidorenko, the lone euro star below 135-140 pounds in this century!!
They provide far more world class pro's. They also provide many more world class pro's than Cuba. Should we just disregard the myriad of circumstances that cause this gap, and conclude that the Cubans are inferior below 141 as well? Are the Bantam- and featherweight world champions from Russia not better than their Latin American competitors because Latin America has better pro's at those weights? I fail to see how professional boxing is relevant to who the best amateurs are.
your last point here is moot, because that issue was already dealt with above...no single country will have more than one boxer per weight class, so china, india, etc could not possibly have 30% of the boxers at OG or WC!!
You can't have it both ways. Since qualification is done on a one per country quota, it is quite natural that the slots are alotted according to the number of countries, which everybody but you thankfully agrees on.
Let's play with the idea anyway... Since Asia has over half of the world's population, they should get half the berths available. With 32 slots in most weight divisions, that is 16 berths for Asia. I guess you'd be comfortable with Myanmar, Brunei and Cambodia having participants at the Olympics at the cost of top 10-15 Euro fighters?
Either way you slice it, basing qualification on population is idiotic. The best fighters need to go, and to a large extent, that is what is happening.
just because my thoughts & arguments dont AGREE with YOUR thoughts & arguments, that doesnt make my arguments
thoughtless, you condescending jackass!!
Whether you like it or not, Latin American
amateur boxers aren't as good as the Euro's, which the World Championships clearly showed.
I'll admit to being a jackass, while upholding the claim that your arguments are thoughtless and biased. As you admit somewhere in the thread, your knowledge of amateur boxing clearly isn't what it should be. Especially when making claims that are based on this lack of knowledgeg and consequent misunderstanding of what's going on. :)
if THAT was true then AFRICA---which has as many countries as europe (54), should have as many boxers repped at OG!!