British Olympic boxing is in shock. Six boxers qualified for Paris, and all but Lewis Richardson leave without winning a bout, including the highly-regarded super heavyweight Delicious Orie. Four of the five who lost claimed their defeats were unjust, one supremely so. Welcome to Olympic boxing, a sport with a queue a mile long of boxers who claimed they were wronged.

First a recap. Sending six to the games would have been cause for a national holiday even 20 years ago. Team GB fielded two at Atlanta in 1996, neither won a bout. Two more went to Sydney in 2000, where Audley Harrison’s gold changed the mood and the direction around how elite amateur boxing functioned in Britain.

Though Team GB sent only one boxer to Athens in 2004, his name was Amir Khan. The 17-year-old from Bolton dazzled all the way to the final. Sadly Mario Kindelan of Cuba, a two-time gold medallist, was waiting for him. Still, silver helped pump more lottery money into the international set-up in Sheffield, which went on to mine medals at an impressive rate; three in 2008, five in 2012, three in 2016 and six in Tokyo. Of those 17 medals, seven were gold.

So how has it come to this? Take a seat. Team GB loses more boxers to the paid ranks than any other nation other than the United States. Indeed, arguably the greatest heavyweight prospect in the world, the Slovakia-born Moses Itauma, didn’t even complete an Olympic cycle before turning over at 18. He won youth gold at the European and world championships and had he chosen the Olympic route might have stood in Orie’s shoes. He is 10 and 0 as a pro with eight KOs.

Covid didn’t help, either, curtailing travel and shrinking this Olympic cycle to three years. Whilst Covid was the same for every nation its impact on Britain was greater because Team GB has to renew is squad comprehensively with little comparative carry over of experienced boxers.

The political climate in amateur boxing further compounded the issue. With the International Boxing Association (IBA) under the influence of a Russian president, currently banned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the invasion of Ukraine preventing competition with Russian athletes and boxers under the IBA banner, vital exposure to international competition shrank dramatically.

Though Britain is affiliated to a new federation, World Boxing, which has more than 40 affiliates with more about to come on board, the competition schedule is not as robust as the Russian-led IBA’s, despite the inclusion of the United States.

Matters are expected to improve as World Boxing assumes greater control of the Olympic amateur scene, a development which might yet guarantee the sport’s inclusion at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, despite the doubts swirling about the landscape.

The lack of high-level competition was significant. Orie arrived at the Olympics having not fought at the amateur world championships, for example. Patrick Brown had not contested one major international tournament before his first-round exit in Paris. If you throw in the random variable of a draw from hell, you have significant elements contributing to failure.

Charley Davison drew the current bantamweight world champion, Hatice Akbas of Turkey. Rosie Eccles faced 2019 European welterweight silver medallist Aneta Rygielska of Poland. Not only was she convinced of victory, the certainty seemed justifiable given the penalty point awarded against Rygielska in the final round.

Heavyweight Brown lost to two-time Olympian and 2021 world silver medallist Keno Machado of Brazil. Absolutely no complaints there. Orie also lost to a 2021 world super heavyweight silver medallist, Armenian Davit Chaloyan, after sweeping the cards in the first round.

At middleweight (75kg) Chantelle Reid met Morocco’s 2023 81kg world champion Khadija Mardi. Like Orie she swept all five cards in the first round before falling to another split, a 3-2 decision against her. It was agonisingly close, but she left feeling proud of her performance.

“I felt I won the fight. We will watch the fight back to see what we can improve on, learn from it and move on,” Reid said. “I felt good going into the fight. Honestly, I have never walked into a ring feeling that confident. I felt ready, I felt I was going to get the win, but still lots to be thankful for.”

As well as she fought, Reid might want to look at her performance in light of the change in the scoring system, which rewards the kind of fast start both she and Orie made. The old push-button system so vulnerable to corruption was scrapped in favour of the 10-9 system used in professional boxing.

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That immediately erased the possibility of erratic, wide margins developing, but at the same time means bouts are more likely to be in the balance in the third. The answer is to start quick and pile on in the second round to neuter the third.

Both Reid and Orie swept all five cards in the first round. Another bold round in the second would have all but guaranteed progress since there would have been too little scope for recovery in the third.

Instead both lost their second rounds by 4-1 margins thus opening themselves to defeat against good opponents in oh-so-tight final rounds. Any unconscious bias among the judges would have been with the opponents since the British boxers have not been seen as often on the international stage in this cycle.

At ringside the British contingent screamed their disapproval at another decision that went against them in the Reid fight. The overriding feeling inside the camp is one of frustration and a sense of what might have been. Others will bring a more balanced analysis when performance is dissected after the games.

UK Sport’s director of performance Kate Baker was due to visit the boxing arena to watch as Britain’s one remaining fighter, light-middleweight Richardson, beat 2022 European Champion and 2023 European Games silver medallist Vahid Abasov of Serbia. She will listen to arguments from the British squad framed around the points made above, explanations not excuses.

The feeling is that the £12m funding cycle would not necessarily be under threat on the basis of one bad showing. After all British rowing has bounced back from a poor games in Tokyo. However, when coupled with the uncertainty surrounding boxing’s Olympic participation, the optimism of World Boxing notwithstanding, Team GB could hardly have picked a more inauspicious time to crash the car.