Asian Games: Sarita Devi has apologised for her actions, says AIBA

After all the emotion and all the angst and all the heartbreak, it appears Sarita Devi has apologised for her protest at the medals podium yesterday at the Sunhak Boxing competition venue. According to a statement by AIBA, Adille Sumariwalla, the head of the Indian Mission at the 2014 Asian Games, forwarded a letter of apology from Sarita to the president of AIBA, Dr Ching-Kuo Wu. “Mrs Devi expressed ‘an unconditional apology’ for her ’emotional outburst’ at the ceremony yesterday, writing that ‘I regret and apologize. Such [caption id=“attachment_1741283” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Sarita Devi has apologised for refusing her bronze medal. AFP[/caption]an incident will never reoccur in the future’”, the statement read. The statement goes to say that Sumariwalla “asked the AIBA President to take into account this letter and the specific circumstances which led to such a ‘spontaneous knee jerk reaction’, which according to Mr Sumariwalla, was not ‘a planned effort’ of the Indian delegation.” The letter follows AIBA’s decision to open disciplinary proceedings against Sarita for her refusal to accept the bronze medal in the lightweight (57kg to 60kg) women’s boxing category. Sarita broke down as the Indian flag was being raised and would not allow the official to put the medal around her neck. “Instead, after some pleading from the official – she simply held the medal in her hand. Her tears were flowing profusely by this point. The crowd egging her on all this while – some cheers, some slogans. “Then, as the Chinese national anthem started to play… Sarita got off the podium and walked over to Park Jina – the Korean who emerged victorious in their semi-final bout – and put the bronze medal around Jina’s neck.” Park was too shocked to react at first but then walked over to Sarita and pleaded with her to take the medal. Sarita eventually did but after the ceremony, left the medal on the podium because “she wanted to leave the sadness behind in South Korea.” An official ended up taking the medal for safe keeping and later the Olympic Council of Asia restored the medal to India following a hearing. “I attended the OCA working group hearing this morning and expressed regret over what happened at the medal ceremony (of the women’s 60kg group) yesterday.” Sumariwalla said. “I told them it had happened in an emotional moment.” Yesterday, AIBA said in a statement that Sarita’s protest “looked like a well planned scenario by her and her team” and decided to review the incident “so any boxer or athlete in other sports will not follow in her footsteps by respecting the spirit of fair-play and sportsmanship of the Olympic Movement.”