So it’s been an eventful week for Olympic boxing. Sandwiched in amidst the gaudy pantheon of sporting events that is London 2012, the amateur boxing contests at the ExCel Exhibition Centre have not failed to routinely excite, bemuse and surprise. As I write, six of Britain’s seven male boxers have stormed into the quarter-finals of the competition, as GB captain Tom Stalker won a tough welterweight bout against India’s Manoj Kumar.Today will prove to be one of women boxing’s proudest moments too: the sport’s entry into the Olympic boxing stratosphere. With Team GB’s bright prospects, Nicola Adams, Natasha Jonas and Savannah Marshall looking ready to go, it is safe to say our fighting Olympians are in a very strong position.

The same cannot be said however, for Team USA. With so much happening it is easy to forget that the boxing world’s premier talking-point is actually what didn’t happen: fight fans watched on with shock as the once juggernaut United States men’s team made a humiliating exit from the Games, without one of them bringing an Olympic medal back home. Yes, that’s right: the once indestructible Team USA have failed. Although such an advent might stir a hearty chuckle from British viewers as we watch the tribulations of our American counterparts, and indeed an unkind laugh from most Cubans, the surprise U.S exit has raised some serious questions. Hadn’t the US, after all, come with the biggest and most anticipated boxing squad of any country to London 2012? Was it not this very country that captured a staggering and indeed record in the annals of Olympic history, 48 boxing gold medals?

Indeed, in the past, Olympic boxing acted like an elite finishing school and final examination paper for future American champions: a great opportunity for talented U.S boxers, who would seize gold medals before launching lucrative professional careers founded upon the interest generated from the Games. American sports fans in the 1960’s were treated to this dynamic spectacle when Cassius Clay, Joe Frazier and George Foreman won gold medals at successive Games (Rome, Tokyo, Mexico City) in the heavyweight category. All three became heavyweight champions, heralding the golden age of heavyweight boxing through their classic showdowns in the 1970s. US Olympic boxing went from strength to strength, with the star-studded classes of ’76 and ‘84 featuring future champions and legends, ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard, Evander Holyfield, Meldrick Taylor and Pernell Whitaker. In 1984, Team USA left Los Angeles with nothing short of 9 gold medals.

They have had their knocks too. Future superstars Evander Holyfield of ‘84, Roy Jones Jr of ’88 and Floyd Mayweather of ‘96 have all been nothing short of robbed of Olympic gold medals due to absurd scoring and disqualifications. But even they walked away with some form of medal, and it is within the context of this glorious history of Olympic success that Team USA is now under such scrutiny. There are a lot of suggestions as to why the USA are now walking away medal-less in the men’s category. Critics have put forward the idea that American boxers are impatient to turn professional, drawn by the glamour, financial reward and publicity that championship fighting can offer. The concomitant of this is in an unwillingness to craft, develop and hone the skills of amateur boxing: a process which requires patience, dedication and diligence. Of the 2012 squad, only Rau’shee Warren has fought in an Olympic squad before.

Such an attitude, others would argue, is inevitable in a sport where severe physical damage is everyday: if you are going to get hit, you might as well get paid handsomely for it. Money in boxing is only to be found in the professional ranks. But unacceptable if true, is the assertion that the U.S boxing team were poorly handled and prepared for the challenges of London 2012. Indeed, Basheer Abdullah, the officer who ran the U.S army’ boxing programme for 15 years, was appointed to the post of head coach just weeks before the Olympics began. Moreover, the rules dictated that as a trainer who had dealt with professional prize-fighters in the current year, Abdullah would violate Olympic protocol if he were to be present ringside or in the corner of any of his fighters. The thought that the head coach cannot even be in his fighter’s corner during a contest hardly makes the disappointing results unsurprising ones.

Whatever the reason, this week represents a sad moment in the history of amateur boxing. While many, including Team GB, will certainly be happy to see American domination in the sport vanquished for the time being, it does not bode well for the future if the USA, once a bastion of dynamic and prodigious boxing talent, can’t get it right anymore. The Americans will hope that their women boxers, whose contests start today, can bring home some much needed medals.

‘Pauca sed bona’, only a few but of good quality. Perhaps someone should have scribbled this on a post-it note to the BBC as they prepared for this year’s Olympic Games. Why? Their coverage has, thus far, been the antithesis of that epigram.

One cannot fault them for trying. Their 27 TV channels and innumerable other forms of online coverage and analysis are a testament to Lord Coe’s plea to embrace the Games.

However, the quality of that coverage, and more so the commentary that accompanies it, does an injustice to the athletes who have sacrificed so much to compete here in London.

Jonathan Liew’s frank confession in a recent Telegraph article puts into words the problem: ‘The writing business is forgiving enough to allow entire careers to be sustained on an ability to produce five synonyms for the word “win”. On television, there is no such hiding place.’

Although the BBC have turned to a number of previous Olympians to add credibility to the otherwise lacklustre commentary, the blunders of their colleagues overshadows any gems of athletic insight that they may produce. 

Mark Foster, the former Swimming World Champion and Team GB’s flag-bearer in Beijing 2008 often struggles to get a word in edgeways next to the bullish Clare Balding who, for all the hand gestures and decibels in the world, still struggles to outline a single race without repeating herself or mentioning the pressure that the athletes are under.

The awkward conversations in the BBC main pod are almost as painful as the dissonance of the commentary teams.

Amir Khan’s discussion of his Olympic experience, 8 years ago in Athens, sounded forced and resembled little more than an exercise in self-aggrandisement for a man who many were saying should retire after the beatings he took from Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia.

Meanwhile, Ian Thorpe’s frustration was tangible as Gary Lineker descended into cheap quips, after the multiple Olympic champion had seen his country’s ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ self-destruct with a disappointing 4th place in the 4x100m freestyle relay.

Even the usually tolerable Sue Barker and Jake Humphrey made me wish the BBC did ad-breaks, with their cringe-worthy ‘I hope you’ve got a bike and helmet’ – ‘I don’t go up hills’ exchange.

BBC top-brass clearly thought that the mystery of less well-known sports could be solved by familiar voices from other sports, with Golf’s Andrew Cotter covering Canoeing and Rugby’s Eddie Butler assigned to Archery.

As Jonathan Liew put it, ‘these men are risking accusations of dilettantism at best, and outright ridicule at worst, by gamely pitching their flags on foreign ground … but without an instinctive feel for the rhythms and patter of a sport, it is impossible to avoid sounding like an outsider.’

With Bradley Wiggins’ recent success in the Tour de France, Cycling has had an ‘hors catégorie’ rise to prominence, but the coverage of the two Olympic Cycling Road Races has undoubtedly been the stand-out failure for the BBC so far.

The men’s race, if Team GB’s disappointment was not enough, was soured further by the lack of information about time gaps between the groups and a number of mistakes by the commentary team, at one point claiming that those who finished outside the top 30 were in fact battling for the bronze medal.

The inadequacy of the post-race analysis only added salt to the wound as John McEnroe and Kelly Holmes blathered on without any real understanding of what they were meant to be talking about. Ignorance, in this case, was far from bliss.

Furthermore, Lizzie Armitstead’s tremendous silver medal was dampened by journalists’ inability to spell her surname and the references to her ‘feeding’ which made her sound more like a prize budgie than the closest Team GB had hitherto got to a gold medal.

Matt Baker’s painful pronunciation of Fabian Cancellara, one of the most famous cyclists in the Olympic peloton, as I write, evinces the over-reaching of BBC commentary teams across the channels as they try to come to grips with the challenge of covering what is likely to be the most watched Olympic Games in history.

With the Athletics beginning on Friday, I can only hope that John Inverdale justifies his Olympic selection with a personal best after disappointing performances at the Crystal Palace Grand Prix and the Aviva UK Trials, and that the BBC learn from their mistakes.

You know what they say about ‘Jacks-of-all-trades’…

Sometimes in sport, a touch can make all the difference. The history-books are gilded with examples of sprawling saves, desperate tap-tackles and faint edges that swung the outcome of a match, even a tournament.

Boxing is one sport that seldom deals in such subtleties. Technical nuance is not unimportant, but quick hands and pretty feints will always be trumped by a sledgehammer left, as Amir Khan discovered on Saturday. And brute force is never less preeminent than when the mouth guards are out.

“This is about two guys who dislike each other beating it out of each other,” declared David Haye in the build-up to his bout with Dereck Chisora. Chisora vowed to “burn” and “destroy” his rival.

No soft touches there then.

This fight was the legacy of an extraordinary brawl in a Munich press conference where Chisora descended from his dais to confront Haye. Haye hit Chisora with a bottle, Haye’s trainer Adam Booth was gashed on the forehead, and Chisora threatened to shoot Haye.

Both fighters had their licences revoked by the British Boxing Board of Control and had to turn to the Luxembourg authorities to sanction the tawdry circus of their mutual enmity.

These are tough times for boxing. No longer can the image of a sport in the doldrums be dismissed as the jaded grumble of stuffy ringside veterans.

The sport’s great 21^st century icon, Floyd Mayweather, is currently in prison for domestic abuse. Inept judging is a growing blight, with Manny Pacquiao, boxing’s other marquee name, its latest victim. Tarver, Berto and Peterson, world champions all, recently failed drugs tests. And then there are the antics of Haye, Chisora and their ilk.

But what boxing has not lost is its capacity to confound. After Haye knocked out Chisora in the fifth, the bitter antagonists shared a warm embrace. This was an extraordinarily redemptive moment of human contact for two men who had had to be separated by a steel fence at their weigh-in.

Their sins were not forgotten, but perhaps absolved, especially when Chisora revealed he would donate £20,000 to Haye’s chosen charity. Sometimes, a touch can make all the difference.

This week, another sporting touch, football’s pre-match handshake, came under scrutiny. In the wake of the deterioration of civilities between John Terry, Anton Ferdinand, Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Cole, it seems we will have to steel ourselves for more tedious ‘will-they-won’t-they’ sagas in the mould of last season’s Suarez-Evra handbaggery.

There will be, provisionally at least, 45,980 pre-match handshakes between Premier League opponents next season. And yet not one will touch us like that single moment of genuinely felt communion between Haye and Chisora, however imperfect the circumstances.

Not one will raise a smile like Bradley Wiggins and Vincenzo Nibali’s finish-line hug at the Tour de France.

Why? Because pre-match handshakes are not true sportsmanship. They are a meaningless mechanical ritualistic faff, fair-play for the fauxmance era. Like the mascot walk and the exchange of pennants, they belong to an elaborate choreography of sportsmanship devised by the game’s governing bodies.

Handshakes should be left to the end of the match as a free and sincere gesture of respect. They would not be as numerous, but at least they would mean something, and maybe, like Haye and Chisora, football’s opprobrious oiks might just surprise us.