US Olympic boxer Gary Russell, Jr. Collapses, will miss games

The US Olympic boxing team received a serious blow to their medal hopes on Thursday with the announcement that bantamweight Gary Russell, Jr. will be forced to withdraw after collapsing in his room at the Beijing Athlete’s village. His roommate, light flyweight Luis Yanez, discovered Russell and alerted the coaching staff. His condition at the time of his collapse was described as “severely dehydrated”.

Russell was in a final scramble to make his division’s 119 pound weight limit. Having weighed 125 at most of the “tune up” events in advance of the games it was clearly a challenge, but during the past few days team coaches became concerned at the extent of the difficulty he was having: "We became alarmed a couple of days ago when we saw he wasn't sweating like he should. Head coach Dan Campbell had the following assessment: “When these kids try to make weight, sometimes they cut corners. What we believe is he did not increase his fluid intake after we told him to."

The boxer was rehydrated by medical personnel at the Olympic village and was not hospitalized. Coach Campbell had been concerned about the team’s practice facility, a heavily air conditioned university gym, when his preference is a warmer gym to facilitate sweating.

Russell was considered one of the US contingents best hopes for a gold medal, as well as perhaps its most exciting and charismatic fighter. Fortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any longterm medical repercussions from the incident and a potential professional career is still a highly viable option.

The US Olympic boxing effort has come under criticism from a number of sources who’ve questioned the training tactics of Coach Campbell as well as the results achieved by the organization as a whole. Russell’s withdrawal left the team with only 8 boxers, its lowest number of competitors at any Olympic games in the past 60 years. Not since the 1948 London Olympics, immediately in the aftermath of World War II, has the United States representation in “the sweet science” been so small. With the history of US dominance in many weight classes, many critics find this fact completely unacceptable.

The boxing competition begins Saturday with preliminary matchups in the middleweight and light heavyweight divisions. Sunday will see the start of the welterweight and light welterweight competition, with action in the remaining weight classes beginning next week.