IBA working to make the bout review system more efficient

: As part of its efforts to do holistic event management and put in place a sound ecosystem, the International Boxing Association (IBA) has been working to make the bout review system more efficient.

At the ongoing World women’s boxing championships here, the IBA is closely monitoring the efficiency of the review system which has gone a long way in a short span of time, since its introduction in November last, to instantly deliver a verdict on a closely fought bout.

“The technical and competition rules are constantly monitored, updated. We have worked on the bout review. In our last iteration, our bout review was a process of having a result of this taken after the session. So, the boxer could be waiting up to two to three hours to know whether he or she won the bout whereas the new one is a kind of instant process before the result is announced,” IBA development director Chris Roberts told The Hindu.

“The kind of science behind it is to understand a bit like VAR in football where the decision being made by the officials around the ring before the protest. In some instances, it was kind of if something is wrong, how do we rectify it? Actually, it should be the responsibility of the technical officials to do that. We do it immediately, that’s something we are monitoring through this event. And it’s helping us to build the digitization within the system.”

The IBA is also working on integrity management with Prof Richard McLaren and his team.

According to Roberts, along with the bout review system, the selection of right officials plays a crucial role in building trust.

“We have done a lot of work with the artificial intelligence system. What we do is all the officials selected (from five confederations) go through this process of vetting…We try to apply as much fairness as possible. That coupled with background checks applied by McLaren plus onsite integrity management with artificial intelligence allows it to have a really robust process, whereas in the past officials were not trusted because of the issues. We know that 250 officials are vetted during the championship. We know that when they go up they will do a fantastic job.”

Roberts took pride in the IBA’s initiative to financially support boxers from 23 countries to help them compete in the ongoing World championships.