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Tuesday, September 19
Aussies look to future after ending feud


SYDNEY, Australia -- Australia's Olympic boxing team said on Tuesday it had resolved a damaging internal feud with the help of professional world champion Kostya Tszyu.

"The guys have all shook hands," team manager Peter Rogers said at a training session.

"We've had a bit of a cuddle, we've had a bit of a cry some of us, we've spoken to the support people around us and we're all very positive.

"We are a united team and we are all heading in the same direction."

However, despite assurances that the matter had been resolved and a "line in the sand" drawn out, the atmosphere after training seemed more suggestive of an uneasy truce than unity and togetherness.

Coach Bodo Andreass, who had been struggling to get all his boxers to attend training after they apparently split into two groups following a training camp in New Caledonia, announced he was "not talking to anybody" from the media.

Some of the boxers were also reluctant to discuss the situation in any detail.

Michael Katsidis, one of two boxers named in Australian newspapers as having been frozen out by Andreass, said the atmosphere after a meeting with Tszyu and officials to clear the air on Monday was "just bearable."

The Daily Telegraph newspaper said Katsidis and welterweight Richie Rowles had been accused of refusing heavy sparring against the French, Italian and German teams in New Caledonia last week.

"Every decision that I have made along the way has been to enhance my performance at the Olympics so if I haven't been able to do something it's because it would have hampered my performance," Katsidis said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Australians sparred again with the Germans on Tuesday, with James Swan sporting a black eye inflicted on him by featherweight opponent Falk Huste.

Tszyu, a former Soviet Olympic boxer who was a world amateur champion in 1991 and fought more than 200 amateur bouts, was drafted in to provide motivation and experience on Monday night in a 45-minute meeting.

"We just all respect him ... his words were very good," said Rowles.

Although Tszyu was not at training on Tuesday, a team statement said he hoped to attend further sessions.

Rogers meanwhile attempted to play down the tensions as little more than minor disagreements between a group of young men who had been on the road together too long.

Australia have been training in Indonesia, Colorado and New Caledonia over the past two months.

"They were just little niggling things like 'Okay, I had a couple of pieces of toast in the toaster back in Darwin and you took one of them and you didn't apologise'," said Rogers.

"And things fester and go on and on. We cleared all those things, we got them off our chests and we are going forward."

Rogers insisted that Andreass, despite Tuesday's media reports to the contrary, "will support all the boxers. All the boxers are supporting Bodo."


 



   
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