I was trawling through back editions of insidethegames the other day, as you do, when I came across this intriguing headline dated May 6 this year: "South Korean Olympic gold medallist banned in race-fixing scandal".

The story underneath revealed that the champion in question was one Lee Jung-su, who with his team-mate Kwak Yoon-gy and national coach Jeon Jae-mok had been rigging results of competitions including Korean team trials. It was claimed there was "institutionalised" race-fixing.

The sport was, wait for it, speed skating.

Speed skating? Ye gods, is nothing sacred in sport these days?

Apparently not, So after Test cricket, what next will they try to nobble? The Boat Race, The Open, the Wimbledon finals? How long will it be before the Listed Events are the Twisted Events?

Just about every major sport has an anti-corruption unit or outside  agency overseeing its morals. Germany’s Bundesliga has just enlisted an outfit called Transparency International to act as a watchdog on match fixing from Asian sources, perhaps the biggest indication yet that football has as much to concern itself about the sort of scandal that has hit cricket, as has any other sport.

For fans, seeing is no longer believing, and it hasn’t been since the days of the infamous "Say it isn’t so Joe" fix in baseball and Ben Johnson’s Seoul-destroying sprint.

Funnily enough a sport which I write about most, boxing, has long been the target of snipers who suggest that fight fixing is prevalent.  Readers may well have gathered that I am not short on  cynicism but, hand on  wallet, I cannot recall seeing a bent fight in half a century of covering boxing.

This isn’t to say boxing’s reputation is unblemished. It is well chronicled that the fixes went in when the Mob ran the fight game in the United States years ago but I am, convinced it doesn’t happen here, thanks to a vigilant Board of Control and a forensic media which Seb Coe describes as "the most forensic in the world" keen  to sniff out the slightest smell of sporting mischief - whether it is  footballing philanderers or snooker players pocketing bribes rather than balls.

True, I am aware of some dodgy happenings in amateur boxing, even at Olympic level - but this is among ringside judges who, more often than not, are biased rather then bent. Or plain incompetent. The same happens in ice skating and, I strongly suspect other subjective sports like gymnastics.

Anyway, I have always considered tennis the easiest sport to fix. All you have to do is hit the ball into the net rather than over it.

I happened to be talking with Frank Warren this week and he was telling how was a guest in Sky’s box at Lord’s during the England- Pakistan Test when an MCC johnnie asked him what he did. "I promote boxing," Warren replied. "Hmm," came the sniffy response. "I haven’t watched boxing since the days of Henry Cooper. Its all bent, isn’t it?".

"I’ wish I’d have bumped into him the next day when all that no-ball stuff broke," says Warren. "I’d love to have seen his face."



The promoter can be excused a little smugness for, as he says, there are still those who think boxing is the most crooked of all sports yet in modern times there has not been a shred of evidence to suggest anything shady.

Warren argues: "Apart from this cricket affair we’ve had major scandals in snooker, horse racing,  motor racing, athletics, rugby’s  Bloodgate, highly dodgy things going on in all sorts of sports.

"But boxing still gets a bashing. Yet I can honestly say that in my time I can’t think of any fight that hasn’t been straight. 

"Ok, you get some iffy-match-making, but in these days of tabloid cheque book journalism, if someone had done something like this in boxing, you can be sure it would have come out.

"When you look at all the scandals in the so-called pure sports, boxing’s reputation stands up well.  For one thing most fighters I know are on ego trips and they’ve got too much pride to take dive. Anyone who thinks boxing is bent should go and take a look at Gerald McClellan and Michael Watson (who both suffered severe brain damage). If fights were crooked, there are easier ways to get beat than be beaten up for 12 rounds. 

"Another thing is that you can’t get a substantial bet on a fight these days. I like a little wager myself but it has to be between friends because there’s no bookmaker in the world who would take a big money bet on a fight. No boxer would intentionally lose a fight. Never mind no-balls, boxing is all about real balls."

Actually I do know of one attempt to fix a fight. In April 1969 Brian London fought American heavyweight James Fletcher, who had a reputation as a fearsome hitter. The Blackpool promoter, the late Lawrie Lewis, confessed to some us a few years later that, worried about the outcome, he had asked Fletcher what it would take for him to "go into the tank". Fletcher’s angry response was to blast London out in two minutes flat.

On Saturday week, at Birmingham’s LG Arena, Warren, soon to celebrate 30 years as a promoter, stages a veritable boxathon, which he claims will be the most competitive night ever in a British ring: dozen bouts including seven title fights involving British, Commonwealth and European championships and world title eliminators featuring unbeaten light-heavyweight Nathan Cleverly and welterweight Kell Brook, with Olympic gold medallist James DeGale and former world amateur champion Frankie Gavin in support.

Some bouts will be one-sided but the certainty is that there won’t be a non-trier on the bill. And whatever we may think of the forthcoming David Haye-Audley Harrison match-up, neither will be pulling their punches in a grudge fight that goes back to their amateur days. Judging by last week’s foul-mouthed exchanges, unlike Pakistan’s bowlers, the only mark they’ll be overstepping is good taste.

So of you want to witness a real fix in sport, best to get your skates on.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics and scores of world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.