Boxing has taken another key step towards salvaging its place in the Olympic Games.
The executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommended on Monday that boxing be included in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
The sport had been stripped away from the Olympic Games after being beset with a number of officiating scandals, corruption allegations and lack of financial transparency.
Boxing’s former governing body, the Russian-led IBA was expelled from the Olympic movement for its failures to reform. The IOC itself ran the boxing tournaments at the Tokyo and Paris Olympics but would not do so a third time.
That left boxing on course to crash out of the Olympics once and for all, until a new body, World Boxing, was formed that sought to replace IBA and gain Olympic recognition.
Boxing was on course to crash out of the Olympics, without a new governing body. (AP Photo/John Locher)
The IOC only granted World Boxing recognition as boxing’s new governing body last month and now the IOC Executive Board has decided to put the sport forward to the IOC Session for inclusion at the LA 2028 Olympic Games.
The IOC Session when it meets this week will need to vote to approve the Executive Board’s proposal, but as long as they do boxing will be restored to the competition programme for LA 2028.
“After the provisional recognition of World Boxing in February we were in the position to take this decision so that this recommendation has to go to the session,” IOC President Thomas Bach told a press conference.
“I am very confident that the session will approve it so that all the boxers of the world then have certainty that they can participate in the Olympic Games LA 2028 if their national federation is recognised by World Boxing.”
The president of World Boxing, Boris van der Vorst, said: “This is a very significant and important decision for Olympic boxing and takes the sport one step closer to being restored to the Olympic programme.
“I have no doubt it will be very positively received by everyone connected with boxing, at every level throughout the world, who understands the critical importance to the future of the sport of boxing continuing to remain a part of the Olympic movement.
“On behalf of everyone at World Boxing I would like to thank the EB of the IOC for the trust they have placed in our organisation and we hope for a positive outcome when the IOC Session meets this week.
“World Boxing understands that being part of the Olympic Games is a privilege and not a right and I assure the IOC that if boxing is restored to the programme for LA28, that World Boxing is completely committed to being a trustworthy and reliable partner that will adhere to and uphold the values of the Olympic Charter.”
IBA attacks ‘fake news campaign’
Since it was suspended, the IBA and its Russian president Umar Kremlev have continued to feud with the IOC, particularly over the rules on eligibility for women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics.
Imane Khelif celebrates her Olympic gold medal
It put Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, boxers who won gold medals at Paris 2024 last summer, at the centre of a contentious row about gender eligibility that overshadowed the boxing tournament at the Games.
“I would not consider this [Paris Games gender row] a real crisis because all this discussion is based on a fake news campaign coming from Russia,” Bach told Reuters.
“This was part of the many, many fake news campaigns we had to face from Russia before Paris and after Paris.
“It [the dispute] has nothing to do with the reality. These two female focuses were born as women, they were raised as women, they have been competing as women, they have been winning and losing as every other person.”
