With the boxers already stepping in the ring at New Delhi’s KD Jadhav Indoor Stadium, we catch up with Canada’s Pat Fiacco, AIBA Women’s World Championships Technical Delegate and AIBA Technical & Rules Commission Chairman, on the women’s competition and the latest AIBA changes to improve the noble art.

What is the role of the Technical Delegate at an AIBA World Championships?
The Technical Delegate is the person responsible of an AIBA event. That basically means that we need to oversee the whole organization of the event, from the management of the Field of Play to all the workflows of the different stakeholders involved in the event, including the athletes and teams delegations, the International Technical Officials, the Referee & Judges and the Local Organizing Committee.

After three days of competition, how is the event going?
The organization is really good, our relationship with the LOC worked very well and the creativity they displayed made for a great event, while meeting all the requirements AIBA of course demands. First days are always difficult in competitions of such caliber, but we were able to fix the small details and we are now confident of providing a world-class event where our athletes can display their talent and skills.

What can we expect from the 2018 AIBA Women’s World Championships?
These are the best women boxers in the world and those that we will be looking at ahead of appearing at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. For a lot of our Olympic champions, the World Championships is where it all started, so we are very excited to be able to start the process of looking ahead to the next Olympics because the clock has already started ticking for these boxers.

What are the key rule changes AIBA is implementing on the road to Tokyo 2020?
During the last couple of years we have been working extremely hard to improve the transparency and the quality of our competitions, referee & judges and scoring system. We know we have to correct some mistakes from the past, and that’s exactly where our efforts are focused.

During the 2018 AIBA Congress, the AIBA Family approved a comprehensive pack of new rules that we are confident will positively change the perception of our sport in the next Olympic Games.

The re-introduction of the Bout Protest Review will allow the teams to ask for a bout result review. This doesn’t mean that every close decision will be contested, the reality behind this rule is changing the teams approach to the results by enhancing their knowledge of the judgment criteria. It will probably take time, but we believe this is huge step in the right direction.

On top of that, we have consolidated previous positive changes like the Swiss Timing Electronic Draw or the 5 judges system to score the bouts.

We have also been working to improve our sports presentation to make our sport more attractive for the fans and also potential sponsors. At the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games we will see for the first time our athletes wearing the national colors instead of blue and red.

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