IOC set to withdraw recognition of International Boxing Association

The International Olympic Committee has never banned an international governing body from running a sport in its 129-year history. Yet that is set to change on Thursday when an Extraordinary IOC Session votes to withdraw its recognition of the International Boxing Association over its failure to address governance, finance and corruption concerns.

The decision is regarded as a formality given that the IOC’s executive board recommended that the IBA, which is run by the Russian Umar Kremlev, be kicked out two weeks ago.

Yet while boxing is not yet on the programme for the 2028 Los Angeles Games, the Guardian understands that it will be reinstated and that the IOC is firmly behind the decision due to the social value of the sport.

Meanwhile any hopes that IBA might be given a late reprieve were surely ended last week when Kremlev accused a former IOC member, CK Wu, who led boxing between 2006 and 2017, of being “a criminal who was killing boxing” and claimed “he should be shot”. The Russian also claimed that the IOC president, Thomas Bach, and its sports director, Kit McConnell, had joined forces with Wu to help destroy boxing.

On Tuesday, the IOC condemned those comments as “violent and threatening” and said that to attack individuals for doing their jobs was “simply unacceptable”.

The IOC initially withdrew recognition for IBA – then called AIBA – in June 2019 because of concerns over judging and refereeing, financial stability and governance. It followed a range of allegations of rigged decisions at the Rio 2016 Olympics and financial mismanagement under CK Wu, who stepped down despite denying the allegations - stories that were both broken by the Guardian.

Two years later the IOC did not involve it in running the boxing