RIO DE JANEIRO — Daniel Trepanier has seen this movie before.
He brings a good young Canadian fighter to the Olympics and, if everything breaks right for the kid, he’ll win a medal. That medal, in turn, would change a lot of things for Boxing Canada, including its funding, its ability to attract other athletes and its profile on the national sports menu.
But finding that medal is harder than finding the philosopher’s stone, partly because Canada is punching about its weight at the Olympics and partly because they lack the juice to win those 50-50 decisions with the judges.
In London, it was Halifax’s Custio Clayton who was stopped just short of the podium by one point. In Rio, Arthur Biyarslanov didn’t make it quite that far. But that was about the only change in the script.
“In my mind Arthur didn’t lose that fight,” said Trepanier, Boxing Canada’s high-performance director shortly after Biyarslanov dropped a split decision to German Artem Harutyunyan in the 64-kg division on Sunday. “But it’s tough for Boxing Canada. The judges make their decision and that will affect our funding.”
And the 21-year-old Torontonian won’t be around for the next Olympic cycle to chase that elusive medal for Canada.
“No, with the talent he has he’s probably already targeted by a promoter,” Trepanier said. “That’s the sad part for us. At some point we need to develop our athletes faster, especially the men, to get that funding.”
In what’s become a familiar refrain in Rio, both Trepanier and Biyarslanov bemoaned the scoring that sent the Canadian to defeat. Earlier on Sunday, it was Ariane Fortin who dropped a controversial decision to Kazakhstan’s Dariga Shakimova in the 75-kg class.
Biyarslanov’s fight with the German was closer than Fortin’s, who was a clear winner.
But he still might have expected a different verdict from the judges.
“When they said split decision I was almost afraid,” said Biyarslanov. “Split decision? I thought I won unanimously. But it was the judge’s call and you can’t do anything about it unless you knock them out cold.”
The fight was decided in a close first round, which all three judges inexplicably awarded to Harutyunyan, who’s enrolled in APB, the professional developmental league sponsored by AIBA.
Make of that what you will.
The German carried the second round before Biyarslanov dominated the third and final round, winning on all three cards including a 10-8 count from the Colombian judge.
That gave him a tie on that card but the other two judges had Harutyunyan winning by a point. That’s also the way the German saw it.
“It was a great fight,” said Harutyunyan. “In this tournament you have the greatest fighters in the world. I pushed my strategy and won at the end.”
As for Biyarslanov, he’s already made it clear where his future lies.
“Right now all I can think about is pro,” he said. “You train so hard and it’s always in the judge’s hands. It just sucks. It’s happened to me a few times now.
“I think I’ve had a good long run in amateur. We’ll see what offers I get and we’ll go from there.”
Biyarslanov, in fact, is already eyeing Montreal where the pro game is alive and healthy.
“Depending on the offers I really want to move to Montreal because boxing’s very big there.”
“I wanted the medal for my resume,” he continued. “But I wanted it for Canada. We haven’t won a medal in 20 years in boxing. It would have been nice to bring the medal back to Canada to show Canada is still alive in boxing.“
Kitchener’s Mandy Bujold is the last of the three Canadian fighters in the Olympic boxing tournament. She has her second-round bout on Tuesday in the women’s 51-kg division.
ewilles@theprovince.com