IOC grants provisional recognition to global body World Boxing

BERLIN : The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday granted provisional recognition to World Boxing in a major step towards the sport's inclusion in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

The boxing competition at the Paris 2024 Olympics was run by the IOC after it stripped the International Boxing Association (IBA) of recognition in 2023 over its failure to implement reforms on governance and finance.

The IOC has not included the sport on the LA 2028 programme yet, having urged national boxing federations to create a new global boxing body or risk missing out on the Olympics in three years' time.

World Boxing was launched in 2023 and has now 78 members across five continents.

"The (IOC) assessment concluded that World Boxing has continued to make progress regarding the identified areas of consideration in order to be recommended for IOC Provisional Recognition as the IF within the Olympic Movement governing the sport of boxing at world level," the IOC said in a statement.

The Olympic body said World Boxing had met several key criteria to merit provisional recognition.

Among them were sufficient members across five continents, application of the sports integrity process implemented during the Paris Games, including with independent oversight and good governance structures, as well as assurances on revenues and signing up to the World Anti-Doping Code.

The recognition, even though it is still provisional, means the sport can now push towards its Olympic inclusion in 2028, having overcome the biggest hurdle in relation to the Olympics, which was the creation of a new global body for the sport.

The IOC suspended the IBA, run by Russian businessman Umar Kremlev, in 2019 over governance, finance, refereeing and ethical issues and did