Boxing will remain mainly in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games after receiving the approval of the International Olympic Committee (CIO). The decision guarantees the continuous presence of sport in games despite previous uncertainties on governance issues.
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Boxing should be part of the program for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles after years of dispute on how sport is executed.
The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, said on Monday that the Executive Council he chairs approved, including boxing on the 2028 program.
He still needs a complete IOC session of around 100 members to sign the decision later this week, but it is generally a formality.
The IOC organized boxing tournaments at the Tokyo Olympic Games which took place in 2021 and the Paris summer games last year after relations with the Boxing Association led by Russian, were broken down, but said that it needed a new partner in time for 2028.
Last month, the IOC recognized a new director organ, world boxing.
“I am very convinced that the session will approve of it so that all the boxers in the world then have a certainty that they can participate in the Olympic Games in the 2028 if their national federation is recognized by world boxing,” said Bach.
The IBA suspended the IBA in 2019 following long -standing disputes over governance, its finances and the integrity of the fighting and the judgment, and took the rare stage to ban it from the Olympic movement entirely in 2023, shortly after certain members of IBA separated to form world boxing.
Olympic Committee against IBA Fight
Since its suspension, the IBA and its Russian president Umar Kremlev has continued to argue with the IOC, in particular on the rules on the eligibility for women’s boxing at the Paris Olympic Games.
IBA said last month that it planned to file criminal complaints against the IOC in the United States, France and Switzerland.
World boxing should work on the examination and updating of the rules on the eligibility for women who must be in place before the start of Olympic qualification events, probably next year.
“This is a very important and important decision for Olympic boxing and brings sport closer to restoring the Olympic program,” said world boxing president Boris Van Vorst on Monday in a statement.
“I have no doubt that it will be very positively received by all those who connect to boxing, at all levels of the world, which include the critical importance for the future of boxing sport which continues to remain part of the Olympic movement.”
US and British boxing officials were among the founders of World Boxing in 2023, and the rupture organization has since added countries with a key influence in Olympic circles, especially India and, last week, China.
The new boxing organization now has more than 80 national federations, although Russia, Spain and many African countries are among those who have not yet registered.
The IOC said on Monday that national boxing organizations would have time to change their allegiance to world boxing before the start of qualification.
Like the IBA of Boxing, the Russian Olympic Committee was exiled by Bach and the IOC.
There does not seem to be an immediate path at the moment of the suspension imposed in October 2023 with regard to regional sports councils in eastern Ukraine.
“The ball is in the courtyard of the Russian Olympic Committee,” Bach said on Monday, although he added “at the work level, the contacts have always been maintained.”
The Russian Olympic organization was cut almost 18 months ago from reception on the one hand of income from the Olympic Games for acts which “violates the territorial integrity of Ukraine Noc,” said the IOC in 2023.
“They must follow the rules,” said Bach on Monday. “Everyone in the Olympic movement following the rules of the Olympic Charter is welcome, and all those who do not follow the Olympic Charter are not welcome.”
Some Russian athletes have participated in the Paris 2024 summer games as an approved neutral in individual sports, and a similar system should currently operate next February at the Milan-Cortina winter games in Ampezzo.
