Boxing's Olympic future under fresh scrutiny

The International Olympic Committee's patience with boxing's troubled governing body looks to be wearing thin following "disturbing developments" at the IBA's extraordinary congress last weekend.

An IOC spokesperson told AFP on Thursday the Olympic rulers were "extremely concerned" with the lack of a new election for the IBA presidency, and the suspension in the run-up to the congress in Yerevan of the Ukrainian boxing federation.

In consequence the IOC's executive board "will have to fully review the situation" at its next meeting in December, the spokesperson said.

This raises the stakes over the future of boxing as one of the staple sports on the Olympic menu.

Boxing's corruption-tainted world governing body is already excluded from organising its own events at the Paris 2024 Games, just as it had been at Tokyo's delayed 2020 Games last year.

Boxing's presence in the 2028 Los Angeles Games is also far from assured. It was excluded from the initial programme, with the IOC leaving the door open to its reinstatement in 2023 given necessary reforms by the IBA.

Beset by judging scandals from Athens 2004 to Rio 2016, a debt mountain, and an ex-president considered by the United States to be "one of the leaders of organised crime" from Uzbekistan, the IBA appointed Russian Umar Kremlev as its new chief in 2020.

But despite setting up an independent inquiry under Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, the 39-year-old former head of a private security firm has done little to reassure the IOC that boxing is in safe hands.

The association's "financial dependency" on the giant Russian gas company Gazprom has also caused disquiet.

In May last year, Kremlov was re-elected uncontested after his Dutch rival, Boris Van der Vorst, was banned from the