Boxing in the Olympics

The new look to Olympic Men’s Boxing  (photo: Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil)

With summer holidays and work, I will be honest — I have not been watching too much of the Olympics on the television.  I have made a point to watch Michael Phelps’ last (possibly?) Olympic swim and Usain Bolt’s historic 100m gold medal performance.  I am a former track and field athlete myself, and so I also have witnessed Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson win the women’s 100m and South Africa’s Wade van Niekerk set the 400m world record.  I catch up on news in the newspaper when I wake up (for instance, the story of Anna Sofia Botha is possibly the most heartwarming of these Games).  But watching live TV?  Not so much.

Between the track events, I have caught some of the men’s boxing and I, like possibly many of you CJSM blog readers, have been struck by the absence of head protection.  Our world of sports medicine is big, and I’ll confess I had not been aware of the rules changes going into these Olympics regarding the non-use of this protective equipment for men’s boxing:  since the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, mandatory headgear has been in place for boxers until now, in Rio.

There has been some controversy over this issue — both when it was introduced as a safety measure, and now in 2016 when it has been removed, also for stated safety reasons:  the incidence of concussions is expected to decline without the headgear in place.  The International Boxing Association (AIBA) made this rule change since the Beijing Olympics, and International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesman Mark Adams is quoted as saying, “AIBA provided medical and technical data that showed the number of concussions is lower without headgear. They have done a lot of research in the last three years. The rule will go ahead for Rio.”

Some of that research has been published in our journal, including this cross-sectional observational study on the use of head guards in AIBA boxing tournaments.   The results of this study show that referees had to stop matches for head injuries more often when boxers were wearing head gear than when they weren’t.  At the end of the day, after integrating all the available current evidence, it was understood that the headgear was not sufficiently protective to prevent concussions (no surprise there: the holy grail of contact sports may be effective, ‘concussion proof’ head protection), and, instead, promoted more frequent hits to the head — a good example of ‘risk compensation’ in injury prevention.

The CJSM study, authored by a group including lead author Michael Loosemore and senior author Julian Bailes, has already generated a fair amount of debate on social media and commentary in the media, including the New York Times.  We have been receiving a fair number of ‘letters to the editor’ regarding the study since these Olympics have begun, and we will be publishing both the letters and the authors’ responses soon.  A robust debate looking at the evidence, and pointing toward where research must head to resolve this issue — that is a ‘contest’ that will extend beyond Rio and into Tokyo, site of the 2020 summer games.  Stay tuned to the blog and to CJSM to stay abreast of this issue.