Boxing nears spot at LA Olympics as IOC recognises new body

The Team Ireland boxing team are welcomed by supporters on O'Connell Street in Dublin, celebrating their achievements at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. File picture: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

The International Olympic Committee has taken a key step towards retaining boxing on the programme for the Los Angeles Games in 2028 as it recognised a new governing body for the sport.

The IOC board granted provisional recognition to World Boxing yesterday. The group was founded in 2023 as a breakaway from the long-established but troubled International Boxing Association, and has picked up many former IBA members.

The IOC said that World Boxing showed that 62% of boxers from last year’s Paris Olympics were affiliated with its members. The IOC added that World Boxing “has demonstrated strong willingness and effort in enhancing good governance and implementation, to be compliant with the appropriate standards".

Former boxing great Gennady Golovkin, who heads the commission tasked with establishing World Boxing as a credible body to run Olympic bouts, said it was an important moment but much work remained.

“Receiving provisional Olympic recognition from the IOC is an important achievement and demonstrates that our sport is on the right path. This decision brings us one step closer to our main goal — preserving boxing at the Olympic Games,” Golovkin said in a statement.

The IOC suspended the IBA in 2019 following long-running disputes over governance, its finances, and the integrity of bouts and judging, and took the rare step of banishing it from the Olympic movement entirely in 2023, shortly after the World Boxing breakaway.

The IOC organised the boxing tournaments itself at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and the Paris Games last year but said it needed a new partner in time for 2028.

Since it was suspended, the IBA and its Russian president Umar Kremlev have continued to feud with the IOC, particularly over the rules on eligiblity for women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics, with a focus on gold medalists Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting. The IBA said this month it planned to file criminal complaints against the IOC in the United States, France, and Switzerland.

Associated Press