"Biased attitude to sport": what is known about the unwillingness of the IOC to include boxing in the program of the 2028 Games

The International Olympic Committee continues to refuse to include boxing in the provisional program for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

This was stated by the sports director of the organization, Keith McConnell, after the first day of the meeting of the executive committee.

According to him, the International Boxing Association (IBA) has not fulfilled a number of requirements that were presented to it earlier.

The decision to exclude is not final and will be discussed again in early 2023.

“The path to inclusion still exists, we are monitoring the situation,” the IOC assured.

The sword of Damocles has been hovering over one of the oldest Olympic sports for quite some time now.

Back in 2017, a high-profile corruption scandal broke out, forcing the resignation of the head of the federation, then called AIBA, Ching Kuo Wu.

The Taiwanese functionary was accused of embezzlement and bringing the organization to bankruptcy, and was also disqualified for life.

An entrepreneur from Uzbekistan, Gafur Rakhimov, became his successor, but the IOC also had complaints against his leadership.

By December 2020, when AIBA was headed by Umar Kremlev, the federation had accumulated multimillion-dollar debts, and due to ongoing suspicions of contractual fights, it was suspended from holding a boxing tournament at the Tokyo Olympics.

The competition was organized directly by the IOC.

After that, officials of the Olympic Committee demanded that IBA carry out large-scale reforms that were supposed to make the management and financing structure transparent, but the measures taken by the new leadership seemed insufficient to them.

The IOC was apprehensive about the fact that the Russian company Gazprom became the main sponsor of the federation, and the office of the president, in fact, moved from Lausanne to Moscow.

In addition, the situation around the next election of the head of the IBA, which took place in May 2022, caused particular discontent.

Kremlev turned out to be the only candidate for them, and his rival Boris van der First was suspended from participation for violating the conduct of the election campaign.

The Dutchman did not resign himself to defeat and filed a lawsuit with CAS, which took his side.

In this regard, the IOC at the next meeting of the Executive Committee in June decided that the IBA would not be able to hold qualifying competitions for the Games in Paris and, accordingly, the Olympic tournament itself too.

The association was again given time to eliminate the comments, but the report presented at the September executive committee also did not satisfy the IOC.

“The recommendation to establish an independent integrity monitoring body has not been fully implemented, and a full background check of candidates has not been carried out.

There was also a recommendation not to organize an office of the president outside the administrative office in Lausanne.

However, we have seen that the main centralized administrative work is going on in Moscow.

We are also concerned that the contract of the monitoring group has ended and it cannot continue to monitor the implementation of the recommendations.

All this helped to paint a clear picture, and we continue to be of grave concern to the state of affairs in the federation, ”McConnell said.

The IBA gave a detailed response to the claims, emphasizing first of all that they consider them a manifestation of double standards.

As stated in a statement published on the official website, over the past six months, the independent expert group of the IOC and relevant specialists of the association have been working closely to share best practices.

“The results of this positive cooperation have been noted and recognized at the highest level.

IOC President Thomas Bach singled out, in particular, the good, high-quality and useful work carried out in relation to the Women's World Championship in Istanbul.

Our work in the field of compliance with (professional - RT ) principles is already having a positive impact on the results of world-class competitions.

Trust is essential to teamwork;

all this time, the feedback has been mostly positive, and therefore such a sudden change in tact and direction is truly difficult to understand and disappointing, ”the IBA said.

In turn, Secretary General of the Russian Boxing Federation Tatyana Kiriyenko expressed the opinion that the international community should unite in order to keep the sport in the Olympic program.

“The world boxing family is strong and powerful, friendly and united.

We must not panic, although all this news is very unpleasant and wrong, but clearly understand that we are members of the International Association, where there is strong management and a correct development strategy.

Very soon, on September 24-25, official representatives of national federations from all over the world will gather at the IBA congress and discuss this issue together, ”Match TV quotes Kiriyenko.

Oleg Saitov said he was ready to take part in an action that would unite all Olympic champions in this sport and convince officials of the unacceptability of his expulsion.

And according to the ex-world champion according to the World Boxing Council (WBC) Grigory Drozd, with such decisions, the IOC only continues to put pressure on Russia.

“The International Federation is headed by the Russian Umar Kremlev, and perhaps this is an attempt by the IOC to weaken Russia as much as possible in all respects.

I see in this a biased attitude towards both sports and Russian athletes.

I have no other conclusions.

But this situation is nonsense.

This should not be, ”RIA Novosti quotes Drozd.

The legendary Kostya Tszyu reacted very sharply to the news.

He stated that he did not understand the officials who make such decisions at all.

“They are generally sick people, right?

Remove boxing from the Olympics, a real man's sport... There's not even a comment here.

What is going on in our world right now?

Do they want Russia to survive?

And who will perform?

Cubans, Americans… They want to remove one of the most powerful countries, and I don’t understand what they are trying to achieve.

They want to remove competition - for what?

Meaning?

Purely political decision.

I am sure that we will not give up, we will do our job right.

Our children will still go in for boxing.

This is one of the best sports, albeit a difficult one, ”Championship” quotes him as saying.