Since 2023, the IOC has been arguing that it is up to the national boxing federations to act in the interests of their athletes and to secure the future of Olympic boxing. There have already been IOC circulars on this, for example in April 2024 from James Macleod, Director NOC Relations and Olympic Solidarity of the IOC.
The IOC is not in a position to organise another Olympic boxing tournament. To keep boxing on the Olympic programme, the IOC needs a recognised and reliable International Federation as a partner, as with all the other Olympic sports.
The establishment of such a federation, which respects the IOC conditions for recognition, is now in the hands of the National Boxing Federations and their National Olympic Committees (NOCs). These conditions include good governance, the integrity of competitions, transparency of finances and accounts, and autonomy. Every National Boxing Federation and every NOC that wants its boxers to make their Olympic dreams a reality and win medals will now have to take the necessary decisions. The NOCs and National Boxing Federations thus hold the future of Olympic boxing in their own hands, and the required actions cannot be clearer.
At the moment, boxing is not on the sports programme for the Olympic Games LA28. In order to remedy this, the IOC needs to have a partner International Federation for boxing by early 2025.
IOC President Thomas Bach and other high-ranking IOC officials have repeatedly emphasised this point, not only in Paris. Most recently, at the general assembly of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) in early September in New Delhi, IOC presidential candidate Prince Feisal Al-Hussein, who is a member of IOC's Executive Board, told the delegates from Asian NOCs:
Clear message from Prince Feisal Al Hussein, IOC EB member and potential presidential candidate, to @AsianGamesOCA: Boxing only has an Olympic future in a new federation. Whatever else @IBA_Boxing, Putin servant Kremlev, the dubious Briton Chris Roberts say - it is irrelevant. pic.twitter.com/SVCkWdEdOE
— SPORT & POLITICS (@JensWeinreich) September 8, 2024
As in other international Olympic federations (FIFA, FIVB, IAAF, FINA, FILA, IWF, IHF, IBU etc. ... to name just a few) that have been (and in some cases still are) characterised by corruption, scandals and mismanagement, the national federations (NF) are of course also decisively responsible for all undesirable developments in the International Boxing Association (IBA, formerly known as AIBA). Nobody can and should relieve these national federations of their responsibility.
In the IBA, the dubious Russian president Umar Kremlev has managed to deepen the dependencies of most NF, primarily with Gazprom money. Another summit of absurdity was the decision of the Asian Boxing Confederation (ASBC) at the end of August to hold on to IBA membership after all. After this extraordinary ASBC congress, the next extraordinary congress will already take place at the end of November – Kremlev cannot pay that much to keep the majority of Asians in the IBA
The IOC initiated the final phase of this dispute over Olympic boxing with a three-page letter sent to all 206 recognised NOCs on 30 September 2024.
I am providing the document below in English and French.
This is the key message:
The NOCs shall no longer affiliate, or entertain any institutional relationship with, national boxing federations that are still affiliated to IBA.
This means, in summary, among other things, that in democratic nations there can no longer be any public funding of these national boxing federations. In countries where sports funding is organised differently, boxing NF can no longer receive funding and other support via their NOC.
But you can formulate it much more succinctly and clearly:
This is the immediate Olympic end for any national boxing federation under the IBA helmet – with all the consequences.
