Park Si-hun

Park Si-Hun (박시헌; born December 16, 1965 in Haman County, Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea) is a retired South Korean amateur boxer who won a controversial Olympic gold medal.

Career

Park's first major success came in 1985 when he won the light middleweight gold at the Boxing World Cup, defeating 1985 European Champion Michael Timm and 1984 US national champion Kevin Bryant. He was then given the light middleweight gold medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics over Roy Jones, Jr. despite an inferior performance.

In the 1988 games, Park won the title bout against Roy Jones, Jr., following a 3–2 decision by the judges. Later scoring indicates that Jones landed 86 punches to Park's 32. Jones has stated Park himself apologized to him afterward. Several journalists made sworn statements that judge Hiouad Larbi of Morocco commented after the match indicating that he acknowledged that Jones won easily, but chose to rule in favor of Park in order to placate the South Korean spectators. Two of the three judges voting for Park were eventually banned from the sport for life.

The decision harkened back to the boxing competition at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. At that time, Koreans were aggrieved that several of their gold medal hopefuls lost controversial decisions to Americans (in particular Jerry Page's win over Kim Dong-Kil, which they officially protested) and at one point threatened to withdraw from the games.

In Park's 3rd round bout against Vincenzo Nardiello of Italy, Nardiello easily won the first two rounds, but because Park won the 3rd round by 'a very large margin' he was given the fight. Nardiello then had to be dragged out of the ring, screaming at the judges.

The Jones-Park incident, along with another highly disputed decision against American Michael Carbajal in the same games, led Olympic organizers to establish a new scoring system for Olympic boxing.

Post career

After the 1988 Olympics, Park retired from his boxing career without turning pro. Park earned a bachelor's degree in physical education at Kyungnam University and served as a high school physical education teacher in Jinhae, Gyeongsangnam-do until 2001 when he was named an assistant coach of the South Korea national amateur boxing team.

In 2008, Park participated in the inaugural World Youth Amateur Boxing Championships as the coach of Team Korea. He is currently the coach of the reserve team of the South Korea national boxing team.

Results