LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuters) – The International Boxing Association’s (IBA) recognition as the global body for the sport was stripped on Thursday by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which ratified an executive board recommendation.
The IOC’s extraordinary session, held online on Thursday, rubber-stamped the recommendation by 69 votes to one to withdraw the IBA’s recognition over what the IOC said was failure to complete reforms on governance, finance and ethical issues.
The IBA had called the IOC board’s recommendation “truly abhorrent and purely political” and tried to have it blocked through an urgent appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, sports highest court, which rejected the appeal on Tuesday.
The IOC had 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.
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 position of the IBA, which is led by Russian businessman Umar Kremlev.
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.
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Jon Boyle and Ken Ferris)
