Berlin 17 Mar. (DPA/EP) –
Boxing will be part of the Los Angeles Olympic Games program of the year 2028 after the provisional recognition of a new governing body of this sport in the figure of World Boxing, although not all countries are part of it at this time.
The president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, said Monday that the agency’s executive committee decided a recommendation in this regard for its next session at the end of this week, where the German relay will also be chosen in the presidency.
The IOC had to take care of the organization of boxing in Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 for its long dispute with the International Boxing Association (IBA) on issues such as arbitration, governance, finances and its links with Russia.
The committee first suspended the IBA, which he later expelled in 2023, which was a threat to the continuity of boxing in the Olympic program since the IOC said that it would only be in the 2028 games if a new partner was. In this sense, last month he provisionally recognized World Boxing, which allowed them to “make this decision” about the future of this sport, Bach confirmed.
“I have a lot of confidence that the session will approve it so that all the boxers in the world then have the certainty that they can participate in the Los Angeles Olympic Games if their National Federation is recognized by World Boxing,” said the president.
Founded in 2023, World Boxing currently has 84 members, including China, Great Britain and the United States, although they do not appear among the members Cuba, Russia and many African nations. In this sense, the IOC pointed out that boxers are eligible for 2028 if their National Federation is a member of this body at the time the Olympic classification tournaments begin.
The president of World Boxing, Boris van der Vortst, welcomed the COI’s decision with satisfaction. “It is a very significant and important decision for Olympic boxing and places this sport a step closer to its reincorporation to the Olympic program,” he said in a statement.
“I have no doubt that this decision will be received very positively by all people related to boxing, at all levels and worldwide, which include the critical importance for the future that boxing sport continues to be part of the Olympic movement,” he added.
Van der Vortst stressed that World Boxing knows that being in the Olympic Games is “a privilege and not a right” and promised that they would be “a partner worthy of trust and reliable who will adhere and defend the values of the Olympic Charter.”
One of World Boxing’s tasks will be that of the controversial gender eligibility standards in time after what happened in Paris 2024 with the Algerian Imane Khelif and the Taiwanese Lin Yu Ting, which were proclaimed Olympic champions a year after being disqualified of the World Cups organized by the one was supposedly not supposedly overcoming some evidence of gender eligibility that was never made public.
The IBA has already warned that it would file criminal complaints in the United States, France and Switzerland against the IOC, which has insisted that Khelif and Lin were born and identified as women and, therefore, are not transgender athletes.