Commentary : Leonard’s Appointment Rocks the Boat

Here we go again.

Four years ago, the U.S. Olympic boxing team won nine gold medals, a record, in Los Angeles.

Today, to people involved in amateur boxing in the United States, memories of 1984 are both sweet and sour.

In what is generally conceded by everyone involved to have been a mistake, the USA Amateur Boxing Federation accepted an invitation for the 1984 Olympic team to train for two weeks, in seclusion, at a Texas cattle ranch.

It sounded like a good idea at the time. There was only one problem: The ranch was owned by Josephine Abercrombie, who just happens to be in the professional boxing business.

Predictably, pro managers and trainers who had relationships with the Olympians screamed bloody murder. Abercrombie, they protested, would have unlimited access to the boxers. The whole scene, they charged, would be a recruiting device for her, while other pro boxing people were denied access to the ranch.

The problem persisted all the way to Los Angeles and nearly ripped the team apart. The behind-the-scenes fighting and back-stabbing among Olympic coaches, the boxers and pro managers and trainers became so intense that Olympic Coach Pat Nappi actually quit--for about four hours--during the Games. U.S. officials found him late one night at Los Angeles International Airport, waiting for a plane to take him home to Syracuse.

Nappi was persuaded to return, and USA/ABF officials vowed never again to let an Olympic team get so close to a pro boxing organization. The implied message: “We’ve certainly learned our lesson.”

Sure.

On Thursday, the USA/ABF announced it will do essentially the same thing this summer, just before the Olympic Games at Seoul, South Korea.

At a press conference here, the organization announced that Sugar Ray Leonard will be an “adviser” to the “Olympic boxing staff.”

Leonard, too, is in the pro boxing business. He manages and promotes three pro boxers and would like more. Thursday, Leonard--who won a gold medal in the 1976 Olympics--talked about how he will instill a spirit of “teamwork, self-discipline and sacrifice” into the Olympic team this year.

He also promised not to do any recruiting. So had Mrs. Abercrombie in 1984. She wound up being the manager of light-middleweight gold medalist Frank Tate.

Col. Don Hull, president of the USA/ABF, announced Leonard’s appointment. No one else in the organization was the least bit thrilled about it.

No one was talking for attribution, but one staff member said: “We just have to swallow Sugar Ray Leonard, that’s the way it came down.”

Said another: “Leonard has marketing connections (a beer distributorship), and he can conceivably raise some significant money for the federation. That’s the sole reason he was brought aboard. It’s totally unfair to Kenny (Adams).”

Adams, 47, former coach of the U.S. Army boxing team, has been named coach of the Olympic team. Nappi, the USA/ABF national coach, coached the last three Olympic teams.

Thursday, neither Adams nor Nappi was talking.

Leonard’s many years of devotion and sacrifice on behalf of the U.S. Olympic boxing program is enough to bring moisture to your eyes. In 1984, he was appointed to the USA/ABF Foundation, a board that determines how to spend federation money earned from the L.A. Games.

He has yet to attend a meeting.

Last June, though, Leonard said in an interview that he’d love to be the coach of the 1988 Olympic team. At the time, when the statement was shown to Jim Fox, USA/ABF executive director, Fox burst out laughing.

“You’re talking about a guy who doesn’t even return our phone calls,” he said.

Plans call for the 1988 Olympic team to go into seclusion, too--at a desert Army base, Ft. Huachuca, Ariz. So if you have the Olympic boxing team, the coaching staff and Sugar Ray Leonard locked up together, is that seclusion?

Pro managers and trainers aren’t likely to think so.

And so already, three months before the Olympic team trials, the bickering has begun.

After the 1984 Olympics, Shelly Finkel became the manager of four U.S. Olympians. He complained bitterly when he was denied access to Abercrombie’s ranch-training camp. Four years later, he’s complaining again.

“It’s a mistake,” he said. “I can’t believe we’re going to go through this again.”

Yes, indeed. Here we go again.