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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Barney Ronay at the North Paris Arena

In the Olympics boxing arena, facts and fairness are taking a battering

Lin Yu-ting during her fight with Sitora Turdibekova of Uzbekistan at the Olympics
Lin Yu-ting during her fight with Sitora Turdibekova of Uzbekistan at the Olympics. Photograph: Ed Alcock/The Guardian

On a packed Friday afternoon at the low-fi North Paris Arena, essentially a reconfigured trade fair hall, the Paris 2024 boxing programme staged the most wildly politicised, toxic and largely misunderstood event of these Olympics.

Yes: this was a travesty. But not perhaps the travesty many people might have had in mind. Definition: a distorted or false version of events. All that was really certain in Paris was that we definitely got one of those.

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