IBA to take IOC to court

IBA President Umar Kremlev
Photo: AFP

The International Boxing Association will appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against the International Olympic Committee’s decision to strip it of recognition.

The IOC’s executive board last week recommended withdrawing recognition of the IBA over its failure to meet a set of reforms. The decision now needs the rubber-stamping of an extraordinary IOC session, to be held remotely on June 22.

At the time of the IOC’s announcement the IBA slammed the decision, calling it a “truly abhorrent and purely political” move.

The IOC executive board recommended that the IOC Session decide “the IBA should not organise the Olympic Games LA28 boxing tournament.”

The IOC previously suspended the IBA in 2019 over governance, finance, refereeing and ethical issues and did not involve it in running the boxing events at the Tokyo Olympics.

Boxing is part of the Paris 2024 Olympics but the qualification bouts and the competition are being run by the IOC and not the IBA, as was the case in Tokyo.

In an IBA report sent to the IOC recently, the boxing association blamed the Olympic body for intransigence and false statements.

But the IOC had repeatedly warned the IBA, whose head since 2020 is Russian businessman Kremlev, that it had not done enough.

Other issues such as a sponsorship deal with Russian energy giant Gazprom that was terminated in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine further complicated the IBA’s position.

The IBA’s actions have led to the creation of a breakaway group called World Boxing and several countries have left the IBA to join the new organisation.

The newly formed boxing body includes New Zealand, the United States, Britain, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden, who joined the Swiss-registered World Boxing in April.

-Reuters