Mandy Bujold lost her Olympic dream to a stomach virus in Rio and her long-time coach to lymphoma. She’s hoping she won’t lose her protective headgear next — and with it, her career — because of the international boxing federation’s drive to bring the amateur and professional boxing worlds closer together.
AIBA, the international boxing association, clearly states in its updated rulebook that all categories of boxers, which includes women and youth, will fight without headgear starting Jan. 1, 2018.
But a recent change that has allowed amateur men, who have had to fight domestically without headgear since 2014, to put it back on for all bouts below a provincial final or the national championships is giving Bujold hope that she’ll get to keep her headgear.
She will, says Boxing Canada president Pat Fiacco, who is on the AIBA’s executive committee. He expects the requirement for women and youth to fight without headgear will be removed from the rulebook at the organization’s commissions meeting in India later this month.
“There will be a motion made and it will be approved, I’m pretty confident,” Fiacco says. “There’s been already enough feedback from the different countries — plain and simple, they haven’t done any studies on youth boxers and zero studies on elite female boxers so, at this stage, there is no appetite for (fighting without the headgear).
“And, certainly for Canada, I will tell you we will not be removing the headgear for women and youth boxers.”
If so, that’s great news for boxing, says Bujold, who has vowed to quit before taking off the protective headgear she’s worn since she first put on gloves as a 16-year-old.
“With (the AIBA) you never know until you actually see it,” she says. “Things change all the time.”
In just the last three years: experienced male boxers 19 to 40 were banned from wearing headgear; the men’s Rio Olympic tournament was conducted without headgear (for the first time since 1980) and open to professional boxers; and, finally, men were allowed to put headgear back on for most domestic fights if their national sport body wanted that.
Fiacco says the fallout from controversial judging in Rio and the replacement of the association’s executive director has resulted in less of a “dictatorship” culture in the AIBA, and national federations are being given more control over what happens in their own countries.
Male boxers will continue to fight internationally without headgear because the AIBA still claims that fighting bareheaded reduces concussions. Many in the boxing community and beyond have questioned the studies around that assertion and have said the safety of athletes is being put at risk by a sport body determined to boost ratings and blur the line between professional and amateur boxing for its own financial gain.
Bujold was at the gym two weeks ago when she first heard that headgear was back on for most male domestic bouts.
“I thought they were actually joking because it seemed funny to go back and forth,” she says.
She’s happy it wasn’t a joke. Headgear is vital to the sport’s long-term viability in Canada, especially for women and youth, she says.
“It’s hard enough already to get people in the boxing gym at the competitive level. The sport is booming when it comes to recreation and fitness but you need people to take that next step and keep our competitive program going,” Bujold says. “You take the headgear off women and the youth and it’s going to be hard to convince parents to bring their kids to a boxing club.”
Keeping headgear keeps her in the fight, potentially, as far as the 2020 Olympics.
“It’s always been something for me that I didn’t want to box without headgear, same reason why I don’t want to go professional. If that were to change it would be a pretty easy decision for me to stop boxing.”
For now, plenty of other things are changing for the 29-year-old boxer. She’s adapting her training and boxing style because of new AIBA rules this year requiring women to fight three, three-minute rounds like the men do, instead of the four, two-minute rounds she’s done for 150 fights.
Boxing Canada is centralizing its national program in the hopes of returning to an Olympic podium and that will eventually force the Kitchener, Ont., native to move to Montreal or lose her national funding.
It’s a lot to take in all at once.
“Also, I’m planning a wedding,” she says, of her August date with Reid McIver, a firefighter.
After the 2016 Rio Olympics, it took her time to digest and accept what happened to her there.
“I realized that, at the end of the day, everything I had done in my career was not erased or gone . . . that one moment didn’t define me as a fighter.”
The night before her quarter-final bout Bujold became severely ill and was hospitalized on intravenous fluids. She went straight from the hospital bed to her bout with China’s Ren Cancan, the eventual bronze medallist, and was far from her best.
“I did get into the ring and try to do what I could with the energy that I had because I know for sure I would have regretted that if I hadn’t.”
What made it more difficult to come to grips with is that she never got to talk it all through with Adrian Teodorescu, her coach and sounding board for years. She knew he was sick but had no idea how serious it was. He never told her it was lymphoma; she thought they’d have time.
“I think he just didn’t want people to worry,” she says. Teodorescu died in November.
Bujold boxed for the first time since Rio two weeks ago in Brampton, with Teodorescu’s son, Armand, in her corner.
“I’m still trying to figure it all out,” she says.
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