Britain on the ropes

David Burke faces a lonely Olympics as the victim of the split between amateur and professional boxing; Harry Mullan analyses the implications a one-man Olympic team will have on the sport

MEN in blazers often outnumber competitors at big tournaments, but the imbalance has rarely been as marked as it will be in Atlanta this summer when Britain's solitary boxing representative, the Liverpool featherweight David Burke, will be accompanied by three officials: the national coach Ian Irwin, the team manager, and a physio. Burke, from the Salisbury Club, was the only one of 21 competitors from England, Scotland and Wales to survive the qualifying stages at the European championships in Vejle, Denmark, last week.

Luck always plays a large part in these matters, and the nine-man English team had the odds stacked against them. The international squad is constantly hit by defections to the pro ranks - only one survived from the eight- man team in the 1994 Commonwealth Games. Two of the Denmark line-up were forced out with injuries, and another was dropped for missing a training session. For the first time, the championships operated a seeding system, and two of the English team drew seeds in an early round.

Under the complicated Olympic qualifying procedure, only those who reached the quarter-finals earned an Olympic place - and, since Britain sends just one team to the Games, even that limited success did not earn Scotland's Scott Harrison a ticket. He reached the semi-finals, losing to Russia's Ramazi Paliani (the eventual champion), but then had to box-off with his fellow semi-finalist Burke, who had been eliminated by the three-time world champion Serafim Todorov, of Bulgaria. The Welsh lightweight Jason Cook and English heavyweight Fola Okesola also lost in box-offs.

Ireland, who won a gold and a silver at the last Olympics, fared marginally better: their 12-man team in the Europeans produced three Atlanta competitors. The flyweight Damaen Kelly and middleweight Brian Magee qualified as losing semi-finalists while light-welter Francis Barrett won a box-off. The main Irish hope, heavyweight Cathal O'Grady, impressed in winning the European junior championships last year, but found senior competition too stiff. He scored one quick knockout, but then took a bad points beating from Christophe Mendy, of France, and was stopped in his box-off by Sergui Dychkov, of Bulgaria.

Britain sent 10 boxers to the Barcelona Games, but there were several qualifying tournaments then, where the competition was less severe than last week's. The European Championships, the sole qualifying event for this year's Games, attracted a record 304 boxers from 41 countries, and the British and Irish were generally out of their depth against opponents who, in many cases, were full-time "amateurs".

Shamateurism used to be the preserve of the eastern European countries, but it is now much more widespread. The French, for example, spent 291 days together in training camp in 1995, compared to the occasional weekend at Crystal Palace which is the best Britain's competitors can expect. Italy operates a similar squad system, which paid off with a gold medal for the light-heavyweight Pietro Aurino. Germany won three golds, with a squad who compete regularly in the quasi-professional Bundesliga, which attracts heavy commercial sponsorship. Bundesliga clubs are allowed to recruit eastern European talent, and the performances of the Bulgarians, Romanians and Hungarians reflected the quality of their preparation.

In most European countries there is close liaison between the professional and amateur sides of the sport, sometimes administered by one organisation. Amateur contests routinely form part of professional bills, and France even has a semi-professional category called "independents" which allows boxers to compete as professionals for a maximum of two seasons and then be reinstated in the amateur ranks if they so choose.

The amateur authorities in Britain have traditionally opposed any integration, and their rigorous policy of not permitting professional coaches to work with amateurs drove gifted instructors like Brendan Ingle, Harry Griver and Frank Duffett out of the amateur game entirely. Their expertise, and that of the many other highly competent professional licensees across Britain was lost to the sport, to be replaced by men who learnt their coaching from a manual.

Now, though, there are signs of a thaw. John Morris, the general secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, was involved in the amateur sport for 30 years. "I have always said that we need an umbrella organisation," he said. "The obvious place to start would be with a medical panel who would take responsibility for the whole sport.

"The professional sport needs to recognise that it needs a strong amateur scene, and that would involve protecting the national squad by not recruiting from it for an agreed period before a major tournament. There would be nothing to stop a civil contract being made between an amateur boxer and a professional manager, so that the manager would be assured that when the time came for the boxer to turn pro, it would be under his management.

"Everything would have to be done by agreement, though: because of the restraint of trade laws, we cannot refuse a man permission to turn pro once he's 18 and an adult. But given goodwill on both sides, a workable system can be devised and I would say we are closer to achieving that now than in my 40 years as an administrator. I had a long meeting at the Sports Council in March with Rod Robertson, the chairman of the English ABA, and there will be further meetings.

"I don't think the picture is as bleak as the European results suggest. Our boxers didn't fail: it's just that the changes in the qualifying system, and the luck of the draw, legislated against them."

Daniel Herbert, editor of the sport's monthly magazine Amateur Boxing Scene, covered the nine days of European competition and takes a less sympathetic view. "A couple of the boxers were unlucky with decisions, but the brutal truth is that the competitors from other countries were better," he says.

"They weren't necessarily more talented, just better prepared and better supported. It all comes down to one thing, of course: money."