BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 9 : Griffin Loses by Unanimous Decision : Boxing: His appeal of loss to Spain’s Lozano is denied by the sport’s international executive committee.

The International Amateur Boxing Assn. (AIBA) closed the book on the Eric Griffin case Sunday.

Griffin, the American light-flyweight who was a gold-medal favorite in the Olympic tournament, lost a 6-5 decision to Spaniard Rafael Lozano on Saturday in the preliminaries, and U.S. boxing officials, after being shown a printout of the computer-scored bout, protested.

They claimed that all five judges using the computer actually scored Griffin as the winner, as did the five-member jury panel of judges using pencils and scorecards.

However, the judges working the computer, who credited Griffin with 81 scoring blows and Lozano with 50, failed to log most of Griffin’s punches within the required one second.

Arthur Tunstall, AIBA vice president from Australia, announced the denial. “The USA protest was discussed by the AIBA jury today, and it was unanimously decided not to alter the decision in the Griffin-Lozano bout,” he said.

“Following that, the USA submitted a letter of appeal of the jury decision to the AIBA executive committee, and that appeal was also unanimously denied. As far as AIBA is concerned, the incident is closed.”

Not as far as Griffin and his adviser, Bob Jordan, are concerned.

Jordan, of Jasper, Tenn., said he’s considering a lawsuit. “I’ve been in the computer business since 1959, and I can tell you this computer-scoring system is a piece of crap,” he said. “Any first-year programmer can come up with a system better than this.”

“Eric cried last night. I mean real tears. I took him in my arms, hugged him and told him I loved him. They ripped this kid’s heart out.”

Many ringside observers saw the bout as a close one, with Griffin a narrow winner. In announcing their appeal, one USA Boxing official admitted as much.

“I went over the video frame-by-frame, and the bout was close until the last 30 seconds,” said Paul Konnor of Milwaukee, USA Boxing board member and AIBA legal counsel.

“But in the last 30 seconds, we feel Eric landed five scoring blows and Lozano one.”

So why the protest? Many saw it as a gesture for Griffin, a two-time world champion since 1989 who had remained in the USA Boxing program after being kicked out of the 1988 Olympic trials when he tested positive for marijuana.

“We feel we owe it to Eric to exhaust all avenues of appeal,” Konnor said. “We have a special feeling for Eric; he stayed with the program an extra four years to get here--but we’d do the same for any of our boxers.”

Jim Fox, USA Boxing executive director, said the appeal was based solely on the judges’ scoring of Griffin’s blows too late.

“We see no evidence this has anything to do with any anti-U.S. feeling or on race,” he said. Griffin is black.

Konnor and Fox said they would ask AIBA to consider increasing the time window for computer scoring in the 1993 World Championships from one second to 1.5 or two seconds.

Joe Byrd, U.S. coach, said Griffin is still in the boxing program.

“Eric’s our captain and he’s still with us,” he said. “He got up early this morning with the guys and ran with them. He’s still doing the job.”