BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS : STILL A FEW BUGS IN SYSTEM

The electronic, computer-keyboard scoring system, adopted for this Olympics supposedly to eliminate the kind of corrupt, politically motivated decisions in Seoul--remember Roy Jones vs. Park Si Hun?--continues to be just as big an embarrassment.

In one session, two boxers hit their opponents hard enough to be awarded standing eight-counts. But at the end of the rounds in question, neither received a single point from the judges. Same thing for a boxer who connected with a whistler of a right hand. And in the first 104 bouts, 12 fighters have been shut out, each leaving the Olympics without having been credited for landing a single clean punch.

“This scoring system favors the expert boxer,” said Karl Heinz-Wehr, the secretary general of the amateur boxing federation.

U.S. light-welterweight Vernon Forrest said the system clearly favors boxers who fight from long range and penalizes those who fight inside.

“I have seen three guys fight so far: Raul Marquez (a light-middleweight who scored an 8-7 decision Monday night), Sergio Reyes (a bantamweight who won, 10-2, despite being very active all three rounds) and Chris Byrd (a middleweight who won, 21-3, despite landing few apparent clean blows),” Forrest said. “And I know what I have to do. Fight like Chris.”

This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant, all Times-Mirror newspapers.