Lausanne, Switzerland, June 24, 2022: In the interest of the athletes and the boxing community, the IOC Executive Board has decided that the boxing qualifying events and competitions at Paris 2024 will not be run under the authority of the International Boxing Association (IBA).
The decision - made at the IOC EB meeting on Friday, June 24 - is centred on the athletes and the need to provide certainty on the Olympic competitions and qualifications leading to Paris 2024.
It follows the continuing and very concerning issues of the IBA, such as its governance and its refereeing and judging system.
The IOC administration will finalise, on an exceptional basis, alternative models for the organisation of these boxing competitions, working closely with the Paris 2024 Organising Committee and athletes’ representatives.
Continuing concerns
The various IOC concerns around the governance of the IBA, including the refereeing and judging process and its financial dependency on the state-owned company Gazprom, are still ongoing.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced on 14 June 2022 that the decision of the IBA Interim Nominations Unit, which had deemed the presidential candidate Boris van der Vorst and three other electoral candidates ineligible for election the day prior to the scheduled IBA elections, had been overturned.
The CAS arbitrator accepted the request that they be reinstated as eligible candidates. Furthermore, the CAS stated that Umar Kremlev had committed the same rule violation yet had been admitted to the election as the sole candidate.
With regard to the planned IBA qualification pathway to Paris 2024, the IOC EB noted that no host city agreements had been signed for the qualification competitions and that there was an insufficient number of certified referees and judges to deliver the planned events.
The IOC first suspended the IBA, then known as AIBA, in 2019 and set up a Task Force to oversee qualifying and the boxing competition at Tokyo 2020.
Source: www.ioc.org