The IOC expels the Iba: now the split in boxing is definitive. Bach: “This sport deserves more”

Now the break is official. The Iba is outside the Cio. The International Boxing Association was expelled from the Olympic Movement for failing to resolve three disputed points: corruption of finances, refereeing and judgement. As the director general of the IOC, Christophe De Kepper said, “the IBA is in a situation of no return”. De Kepper himself has ‘guaranteed’ that boxing will be on the program for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Considering that the IOC’s ‘Boxing task force’ managed both the qualifications and the Tokyo Olympic tournament, today it emerged that the system will also be similar for the Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028 Games. In 2019 the International Olympic Committee he had suspended the Iba by managing the subsequent qualifiers and tournaments in the various weight categories at the Tokyo Games. Only two days ago the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne had rejected the urgent appeal of the IBA, which had tried to block the recommendation of the IOC, defined as “aberrant and purely political”, to expel the world association from the Olympic Movement taken today during the 140th Session.

“We don’t have a problem with boxing or boxers, on the contrary, we share their values, it’s a sport that plays an important social role in every country – underlined Thomas Bach – If this were not the case, there would have been no Olympic qualifiers and then the matches in Tokyo in 2021 since the Iba was already suspended at the time. Instead, we have a very serious problem with the Iba due to its governance. We place great value on boxing, boxers deserve to be guided by an international federation that have integrity and transparency”.