COSTA NAVARINO, Greece—Boxing is set to be on the program for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles after years of disputes over how the sport is run.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said Monday the executive board he chairs approved including boxing on the 2028 program.
It still needs a full IOC Session of about 100 members to sign off on the decision later this week, but that is usually a formality.
The IOC organized the boxing tournaments at the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021 and the Paris Summer Games last year after relations with the Russian-led International Boxing Association broke down, but said it needed a new partner in time for 2028.
Last month, the IOC recognized a new governing body, World Boxing.
“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 L.A. 2028 if their national federation is recognized by World Boxing,” Bach said.
The IOC suspended the IBA in 2019 following long-running disputes over governance, its finances and the integrity of bouts and judging, and took the rare step of banishing it from the Olympic movement entirely in 2023, shortly after some IBA members broke away to form World Boxing.
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.
The IBA said last month it planned to file criminal complaints against the IOC in the United States, France and Switzerland.
World Boxing is expected to work on reviewing and updating rules on female eligibility that need to be in place before Olympic qualifying events start, likely next year.
“This is a very significant and important decision for Olympic boxing and takes the sport one step closer to being restored to the Olympic program,” World Boxing president Boris van der Vorst said in a statement Monday.
“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.”
American and British boxing officials were among World Boxing’s founders in 2023, and the breakaway body has since added countries with key influence in Olympic circles, including India and, last week, China.
The new boxing body now has a membership of more than 80 national federations though Russia, Spain and many African countries are among those which did not yet sign up.
Russia’s responsibility
Like boxing’s IBA, the Russian Olympic Committee has been exiled by Bach and the IOC.There seems to be no immediate way back right now from the suspension imposed in October 2023 for what was effectively a land grab of regional sports councils in eastern Ukraine.
“The ball is in the court of the Russian Olympic Committee,” Bach said Monday, though he added “on the working level the contacts have always been maintained.”
The Russian Olympic body was cut off nearly 18 months ago from receiving a share of revenue from Olympic Games for acts that “violates the territorial integrity of the NOC of Ukraine,” the IOC said in 2023.
“They have to follow the rules,” Bach said Monday. “Everybody in the Olympic Movement who is following the rules of the Olympic Charter is welcome, and everybody who is not following the Olympic Charter is not welcome.”
Some Russian athletes did compete at the 2024 Paris Summer Games as vetted neutrals in individual sports, and a similar system is currently likely to operate next February at the Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Games.
