Olympic boxing has had the occasional moment of heat and light down the years. There have been walk-outs and sit-ins and judging funks. The Cuba-USA face-offs have been good value. More often boxing is a distant presence at the big summer fair, hived off on an outer table like a low-ranking uncle, staged in some echoey hall, crammed in between the big ticket events.
At which point: welcome to Paris 2024. We aren’t just through the looking-glass here, but through quite a few of them, simultaneously, with no obvious way back. Welcome to Olympic boxing as hostile geopolitics, as a theatre of the global pile-on, a place where hugely important issues that actually affect people’s lives are translated into macro-opportunism and sabre rattling at one remove.
