Boxing could be out of Paris Olympics amid conflict with Umar Kremlev

“It has also become clear again, that IBA wants to distract from its own grave governance issues by pointing to the past, which has been addressed by the IOC already in 2019,” the IOC statement read, in part. “ … The IOC will have to take all this into consideration when it takes further decisions, which may — after these latest developments — have to include the cancellation of boxing for the Olympic Games Paris 2024.”

The statement comes days after Kremlev attacked the IOC’s refusal to include boxing in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics unless the IBA makes significant reforms after a match-fixing scandal at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

“They have no right to dictate to us how to live,” Kremlev said at IBA’s Global Boxing Forum in Abu Dhabi last week. “No other organization should interfere or meddle in the business of our association.”

IOC seeks ‘a pathway back to inclusion’ for athletes from Russia and Belarus

Kremlev, who had been elected in 2020, has been accused of centralizing the IBA’s power in his native Russia, spending heavily on marketing that appears to promote himself and depending too heavily on the IBA’s lone sponsor, the Russian energy company Gazprom. He has, at times, suggested moving away from the Games, saying Olympic leaders have “no real interest in the sport of boxing and the boxers but is only interested in its own power.”

Earlier this year, the IOC said it would run the boxing competition in Paris as it did in Tokyo following a report on the fixed fights in Rio. Two weeks ago it even laid out a schedule of boxing qualifying events. Thursday’s statement is the first time the IOC has suggested it might drop the sport from the 2024 program. A decision would have to be made before qualifying events begin next summer.

The statement follows an odd two-week period in which the IBA sent a delegation to the IOC’s headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, asking for boxing to be added to the Los Angeles Games only to see Kremlev unload on the IOC days later and suggest the organization might move away from the Olympics.

Since taking over the IBA, Kremlev has promised reforms, but questions about judging at IBA-run events have persisted because of his refusal to have an outside system of referees and judges. His reelection earlier this year was plagued with problems after his primary opponent., Dutch boxing heard Boris van der Vorst, was disqualified a day before the vote. The Court of Arbitration for Sport later forced a second election, which never happened after the IBA voted not to hold one.

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