Columnist Dean Juipe: U.S. needs to see some Olympic gold

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, April 3, 2002 | 11:14 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Yes, Americans are sore losers when it comes to Olympic boxing. If the U.S. can't beat 'em, it's not inclined to join 'em.

"U.S. participation in Olympic boxing will be past tense, it'll be history if we don't do well in 2004," said Kenny Weldon, the chairman of the national coaches' committee for USA Boxing. "This is as lightly as I can say it: Our success over the next couple of years will determine whether we as a country even continue competing at the highest level.

"That's how important the 2004 Olympics are to us."

Weldon, speaking Tuesday at Caesars Palace as he took in the Everlast U.S. Men's Championships that run through Saturday, lays his views right on the table.

"We won't even have a 2008 (boxing) team if we don't do better than we did in 2000," he said, referring to the Americans failing to win a gold medal in Australia. Additionally, the U.S. has had only two gold-medal winners in the past three Olympiads combined.

"Drastic times call for drastic measures," Weldon said, heralding a number of changes in USA Boxing's philosophy, at least one of which is marginally under his control. "USA Boxing has had some hard decisions to make of late, but it has had to make them."

He's advocating a return to cohesive coaching, one that rewards experience.

"You'd have to be blind not to recognize that we're losing our coaches," he said. "We've got to keep our good people involved. We can't let them get discouraged after they've developed a young fighter only to lose him to the pros."

It's not that he feels there are too many newcomers teaching the sport, only that they're not necessarily using the proper methods.

"The way to correct our situation is through the coaches," Weldon, a long-time gym owner and trainer from Texas, said. "The difference between winning and losing is the cornermen not being able to adjust when they need to.

"The science of the sport has been lost."

Well, not so much lost but misplaced.

"Cuba and Russia ... their programs now were our programs 20 years ago," Weldon said. "They're doing what we used to do, and they're doing it well. We, on the other hand, have evolved in a different direction and it hasn't helped us.

"Here we are, with more talent than maybe every other country combined, being unable to win a gold medal. It all comes down to a lack of coaching."

Computerized scoring, thought by many Americans to be the bane of the amateur game, isn't the culprit per se, Weldon believes.

"It's easy to blame it on the computers, but it's not the computers," he said. "With the proper coaching, my mama could win a fight being scored by computers."

He has some plans and the initiative to push his concepts and ideas into a new reality.

"We're going to teach fundamental boxing all over the country and bring in some coaches who have been overlooked and we're not going to have any decisions influenced by politics," he said. "I'm putting forth the effort myself and others are, too.

"In the long run, USA Boxing will be greatly enhanced."

If it isn't, perhaps it will lose its very reason for existence.