Boxing is not doing much to help his case.

Summoned by the IOC to clean up the body under penalty of disappearing from the Olympic program after the Paris 2024 Olympics, the international federation (IBA) has re-elected Umar Kremlev as its head.

The latter had succeeded in 2020 to Gafur Rakhimov, dismissed a year earlier by the IOC because of his acquaintances with organized crime.

Two years earlier, it was the Taiwanese Ching-Kuo Wu, who, caught up in the pans - or even the whole kitchen - had resigned from the presidency in 2017.

Umar Kremlev is more of a holy man than his predecessors.

But the IOC is not fully satisfied with the current governance.

As mentioned by

L'Equipe

, the Olympic committee is calling for structural reforms, particularly related to financing, as the IBA is highly dependent on Gazprom.

These are slow to arrive, and the IOC ends up cracking: boxing is removed from the Olympic program after the Paris 2024 Olympics. With a short reprieve until 2023, anyway, in case the situation improves.

A sham re-election

The re-election (which bears only the name) of Kremlev does not quite go in this direction.

We'll make it short: in May, the Dutchman Boris van der Vorst presented himself against the outgoing president during the IBA congress.

His candidacy was initially invalidated for obscure reasons, and ban der Vorst took the case to the CAS, which ruled in his favor.

New congress in Yerevan, last week.

Defeat of van der Vorts.

Well, not exactly.

Rather than proceeding to a vote to decide between the two candidates, the IBA turned to the delegates to ask them if new elections should be organized, because casually, it's a bit boring.

Result, 106 against, 36 for.

The international boxing federation considers that the result has value of re-election of Umar Kremlev.

The IOC worried, the IBA responds

The IOC said it was "extremely concerned" by this circus.

“Following these disturbing developments, the IOC Executive Board will re-examine the situation at its next meeting (December 5 to 7 in Lausanne).

"The IOC should ask our independent observers, Professor Richard McLaren and the chairman of the ethics committee, Bernhard Welten, to tell them about the 'chaotic circumstances of the voting procedure' which they mentioned", for his part reacted the general secretary of the IBA, George Yerolimpos to

Inside The games

.

“We had supervisors during the elections, and we must all respect the democratic will of the IBA Congress, which was expressed in a transparent way.

“Not sure that this is enough to fix the case of boxing, which could disappear quite quickly from the Olympics, to which some of its representatives do not care more than that.

Sport

Mafia president and sham arbitration reform, will boxing lose its place in the Olympics?

Sport

Boxing: Colombian Luis Quinones in induced coma after national title fight

  • Sport

  • Boxing

  • IOC

  • Russia

  • Olympic Games