THE SEOUL GAMES / DAY 4 : Uproar Goes On as Hembrick Loses Appeal : International Panel Denies Protest of U.S. Boxer Who Showed Up Late for Match

Finger-pointing and buck-passing were rampant in the U.S. boxing delegation at the Olympic Games Tuesday, the day after middleweight Anthony Hembrick missed the bus.

Hembrick had been the victim Monday morning of a major foul-up. U.S boxing coach Ken Adams and assistant Hank Johnson misread Monday’s schedule and brought Hembrick to the Chamshil Students’ Gymnasium too late for his scheduled fight. Hembrick lost, on a walkover, then later lost an appeal of the disqualification, and the uproar still hadn’t subsided Tuesday.

Col. Don Hull, president of the USA Amateur Boxing Federation, in a telephone interview from his home in Cresskill, N.J., put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Adams and Johnson.

“The coaches failed us,” he said. “They’ve got to be fighting for these kids . . . and it’s just tragic, to see Hembrick’s 4 years of preparation go down the drain.”

Adams, in a brief conversation with reporters as he left the boxing venue Monday, had acknowledged that he was to blame for Hembrick’s late arrival.

Johnson and Wylie Farrier, the team manager, sat with Hembrick through most of the Monday night session, waiting an hour and a half for a ruling by the protest committee of the International Amateur Boxing Assn. (AIBA).

USA/ABF executive director Jim Fox had filed the appeal, citing a “confusing” bout schedule, bus transportation problems at the Olympic Village and the use of two rings, which altered the bout schedule.

The committee deliberated Monday morning, and announced a 2-2 tie, with committee chairman Taieb Houichi of Tunisia announcing he would not cast his vote until the evening session, after he had consulted with AIBA president Anwar Chowdry of Pakistan. Houichi’s vote made the difference when the committee later ruled, 3-2, against Hembrick.

At 9:05 p.m., apparently having been told about the negative vote, Johnson emerged from an arena tunnel, 30 feet from where Hembrick sat quietly with Farrier, and caught Hembrick’s eye. He waggled a let’s-go finger gesture at Hembrick, and he wasn’t smiling.

He put his arm around Hembrick, and as he spoke quietly to him, the boxer’s head turned upward, his eyes closed.

Farrier, Johnson, Adams and Hembrick walked out of the building, a dozen writers behind them, shouting questions.

“No comment until tomorrow,” Adams said.

During Tuesday’s morning session, U.S. appeals continued on Hembrick’s behalf.

Paul Konnor of Milwaukee, the U.S. representative to the AIBA, said that Fox had met early Tuesday with President Juan Antonio Samaranch of the International Olympic Committee and that Samaranch had agreed to meet with Chowdry.

Konnor also said that he, Fox and Farrier had met with Robert Helmick, president of the United States Olympic Committee, and the USOC’s executive committee.

Loring Baker, former president of USA/ABF, expressed outrage at the Hembrick foul-up when contacted by phone at his Atlanta home.

“Absolutely inconceivable,” Baker said. “You’re talking about 2 Army coaches looking at a bout schedule shown in military time, in English, and they still can’t get the kid to the arena on time.

“I feel so bad for Hembrick, all that work washed out by poor management. We’ve got 10 adults and 12 boxers over there. You’d think they could get the boxers to the arena. Not only that, but our staff people were sent over there months before the Olympics for dry-run work.”

Baker called the appeal denial a predictable result.

“Houichi is a weasel,” he said. “He’ll do anything Chowdry tells him to do, and he did anything Hull told him to do when (Hull) was (AIBA) president. And you have to understand, Chowdry detests Hull. So the fact Hull has a problem with Chowdry didn’t help us at all in the protest.”

Hull has been accused of financial improprieties during his 1978-1986 AIBA presidency, and Chowdry and AIBA vice president Karl-Heinz Wehr of East Germany claim Hull owes AIBA $11,000. Hull has denied the charge, but he was nonetheless denied a credential to attend the Olympics. As for the Hembrick matter, Farrier, a 63-year-old retired Cleveland policeman, claimed illness. Many have blamed him, on the theory that team managers are supposed to make sure athletes get to the competition on time.

“I’ve been laid up since the opening ceremony,” he said. “My feet and ankles are killing me. I’ve been in bed since then, with my feet propped up.”

Farrier blasted the Olympic bus system.

“For (Monday night’s) session, Hembrick and I left the village at 5:30. We waited 20 minutes for a bus. We barely got on the bus, and it was a 22-minute ride over here.

“Adams and Johnson felt they had plenty of time to get him over here, what can I tell you?”

Tom Coulter, another assistant who was briefly the head coach, until Adams won an arbitration ruling that gave him his job back, said he was not involved.

“It’s not my day to work,” he said, when descended upon moments after Hembrick had been scratched.

One of the last to talk with Hembrick before the ruling came down Monday night was Dr. Robert Voy, a U.S. Olympic Committee doctor assigned to the U.S. boxing team.

He put his arm around the boxer, and whispered to him for a few minutes.

“I told him how terrible we all felt, and for him to remember Evander Holyfield’s situation at the L.A. Olympics,” he said.

Holyfield was on his way to a gold medal in Los Angeles when a Yugoslav referee disqualified him for hitting a New Zealand opponent after a command to break.

“I told Anthony that if he wants a pro career in boxing, not all of this is bad,” Voy said. “I told him that Holyfield in some ways has used the notoriety he received in that Olympic incident to further his pro career.”

Hull found a cruel coincidence in Hembrick’s case.