14 May 2004	Friday	23 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

KARACHI, May 13: Thailand on Wednesday charged technical delegates of the third regional Olympic qualifying boxing tournament with manipulating the results of the bouts.

"The technical delegates, Pakistan's Shakeel Durrani, the son-in-law of Pakistan boxing chief and AIBA president Anwar Chowdhry, and Yoo Jae Joon of South Korea manipulated the results whenever they wanted during the whole tournament.

"Both Shakeel and Joon knew about the results before the bouts. They knew who is going to win and who will lose," Thailand team manager Vadm Thaweesak Daengchai told Dawn on the concluding day of the competition - the last regional Olympic qualifiers.

The official explained that the technical delegates had control over the results and the obsolete computer software allowed them to even interchange the points scored by the boxers by using the keyboard.

"The technical delegates were using DOS operating system for scoring which everyone knows is too slow. Even IOC does not allow the use of this system. It could not be used in any major event like this.

"Besides being slow, the major fault with this system is that technical delegates could change the points. For example, if boxer in red corner scored 19 points and boxer in blue corner 25, technical delegates could easily interchange the points by pressing just one key of the keyboard if they are using DOS.

"And that is exactly what Joon was doing. Not only the scoring was faulty because of slow system, Joon was also interchanging the points at the behest of Shakeel. That is why so many controversies cropped up which resulted in protests like the one from Iran," he said.

The tournament was marred by number of controversial decisions, sparking protests by Iran, Sri Lanka, Syria and India. Daengchai said instead of DOS, the technical delegates should have installed Windows - an advanced software which was not only much faster than DOS, also could have made impossible for the technical delegates to change the results through keyboard.

"We informed Joon that DOS is an old and slow system. But he insisted the system is fine. He was not ready to use Windows despite our objection," the Thai disclosed, saying Joon was instructed to use DOS by Shakeel.

The official said similar situation was created in the second regional qualifying tournament in China where DOS was being used for computer scoring but was later changed by Windows.

"In China the same old same system was installed but the jury changed it by Windows on the third day of the contest when some participants objected. But here you can see DOS was used throughout the tournament despite our protest which resulted in manipulation of the results," the Thai said.