According to Tariq Panja of the New York Times, there is major controversy at the moment that the International Olympic Committee and the British Government allowed the 2020 European Boxing Olympic Qualification Tournament to start as scheduled for three days from March 14-16 at the Copper Box Arena in London, England. As a result, there have been seven people who attended the event who have since been diagnosed with Coronavirus according to Reid Carlson of Swim Swam. The tournament was supposed to take place until March 24 but was suspended after three days of competition.
At this time, there were three people each from Croatia and Turkey who were diagnosed with the disease. From the Croatian Boxing Federation there is one boxer and two coaches and from the Turkish Boxing Federation, there are two boxers and one coach.
There were 350 boxers from 40 countries who participated in the tournament. The event continued on a massive scale even though many professional sports leagues had suspended play.
Eyup Gozgec, the President of the Turkish Boxing Federation is very angry that the event continued to take place. He stated many voiced concern at the time, including European Boxing Confederation President Franco Falcinelli of Assisi, Italy, who stated that the risk of a boxer getting Coronavirus from the event was “very high.”
It should be noted that the European Boxing Olympic Qualification Tournament was not the only event to take place that weekend. The Pan American Olympic Wrestling Qualification Tournament continued during the same period from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Not long after the Olympic qualification tournaments in wrestling and boxing, it was determined by the International Olympic Committee that the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo would be delayed one year because of Coronavirus.
The European Olympic Boxing Qualification Tournament in London only took place for men and not women. Those who qualified for the Olympic Games in Tokyo were eight flyweight boxers (Billal Bennama of France, Sakhil Alakhverdovi of Georgia, Brendan Irvine of Ireland, Gabriel Escobar of Spain, Galal Yafai of Great Britain, Koryun Soghomonyan of Armenia, Cosmin Girleanu of Romania and Batuhan Ciftci of Turkey) and eight featherweight boxers (Peter McGrail of Great Britain, Roland Galos of Hungary, Samuel Kistohurry of France, Tayfur Aliyev of Azerbaijan, Mykola Butsenko of Ukraine, Jose Quiles of Spain, Albert Batyrgaziev of Russia and Hamsat Shadalov of Germany).
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