No Olympic reprieve for Ward

Boxer Joe Ward has lost his bid to land a late place at the Olympics at an emergency meeting of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in London.

The 18-year-old’s lawyers launched an appeal after Ward was overlooked for a wild-card slot in the light-

heavyweight division by amateur boxing’s governing body, AIBA.

Ward, who is ranked four in the world and is the reigning European champion, argued the selection of Montenegro’s Ratko Draskovic contradicted AIBA’s original explanation that Ward was not chosen because he was "not the next best boxer [in Europe]".

Draskovic is not ranked in the top 39 of the world rankings currently available on AIBA’s website. The Montenegrin reached the second round of last year’s World Championship, while Ward went one round further to the last 16.

Ward’s case was also strengthened by the nature of his shock defeat to Turkey’s Bahran Muzaffer in the final Olympic qualification tournament, a bout most observers agreed Ward should have won clearly.

But according to International Olympic Committee guidelines, wild-card or tripartite places are reserved for smaller nations, typically with less than six athletes already qualified in the sport in question.

And AIBA statutes dictate that the ’next best boxer’ rule is only applied when there have not been sufficient applications for tripartite places in a particular weight division.

Montenegro press attaché Aleksandar Radovic said he was unaware of the furore. He said: “We have fulfilled all the criteria set by the IOC and AIBA.”