Faulty scales anger boxers, coaches
Problems and controversies continued to rock the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.
Coaches and competitors from participating countries abandoned the official weigh-in for the boxing competition on Monday, saying that the weighing scales were faulty.
Coaches demanded officials to adjust or use a new set of scales after several boxers weighed over the limit.
"There was a massive brawl between coaches and officials. One of our boxers, Jason Maloney, weighed in and found he was a fraction over. He went to the sauna and came back and it showed he was a half a kilogram over," Australian boxing team official John
Gatfield said.
Australia's assistant coach Don Abnett echoed Gatfield's sentiments, saying that organisers should fix the glitches immediately.
"It is a farce, but there is not a lot more we can do, I have never seen this before. I thought last year when I witnessed a bloke in Victoria win a fight with one arm I had seen it all, but this even tops that," Abnett said.
Another upset coach was Northern Ireland's Stephen Friel.
"The whole place was in uproar. All of the coaches here said they had never seen anything like it," he said.
Despite receiving numerous complaints, competition manager Lenni Gama insisted that the scales were in perfect condition.
"All this fuss is created by the teams who have overweight boxers in their team. The scales are perfect," he said.
The official weigh-in for the competition has been reset for today, just a few hours before the start of the tournament.
The faulty scales were the latest setback to hit New Delhi's hosting of the Commonwealth Games. Participating countries earlier threatened to boycott the games due to construction delays and poorly-built facilities. An attack on tourists and a dengue outbreak
in the city added to the country's hosting woes.
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