The IOC provisionally recognizes World Boxing as the new Olympic boxing federation – and thus also provides relief for the DBV.
A sigh of relief in amateur boxing and at the DBV: after years of uncertainty, the Olympic future of the sport seems to be secured.
On Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) provisionally recognized the new World Boxing Association as an international association within the Olympic movement, as the Rings organization announced. The knockout seems to have been averted, and the German Boxing Association can also look positively into the future.
“This is a milestone. All the efforts have paid off,” said DBV President Jens Hadler in an interview with SID: ‘This brings peace of mind and planning security.’
Boxing was threatened with the end of the Olympics
After the exclusion of the International Boxing Association (IBA) in June 2023, boxing was left without an Olympic world association, and one of the oldest sports was threatened with deletion from the program at the Los Angeles 2028 Games. It would have been a nightmare for the sport: the Olympic stage once boosted the careers of Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Wladimir Klitschko and many others.
With World Boxing, the IOC has now found the “reliable partner” that IOC President Thomas Bach had called for to secure the Olympic future until “early 2025”.
World Boxing now includes 78 national associations from five continents, with the DBV being a founding member. The world association was launched in 2023 against the backdrop of the conflict between the IBA and the IOC. The IOC suspended the Russian-controlled IBA in 2019 due to serious misconduct and excluded it in June 2023.
After the IBA was excluded, the 2021 Olympic boxing tournaments in Tokyo and 2024 in Paris were organized by the IOC itself. Officials and athletes expressed concern. “If boxing does not remain Olympic, the sport of boxing is dead,” said German bronze medalist Nelvie Tiafack in Paris. The uproar surrounding the alleged transboxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting, which was largely driven by the IBA, was a sideshow of the politically charged disagreement.
Chance of Olympia is increasing – it’s up to the associations
Now the preliminary recognition of World Boxing “gives the athletes a good feeling. Most of the way has been gone,” says Hadler, who expects a further influx of national associations.
Bach had made it clear in Paris that boxing in Los Angeles would only be in the Olympic program if there was a reliable partner: “Now the national boxing associations have to make their choice. It’s up to them.” And the IOC expressed its satisfaction with the development of World Boxing.
In its statement, the IOC stated that, from a sporting point of view, World Boxing had ‘proven that 62 percent of boxers and 58 percent of boxing medalists at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games belong to national associations that are members of World Boxing’.
In addition, the association applies the “procedure for safeguarding sporting integrity” and has “created the structure and documentation for good corporate governance”. World Boxing has also “successfully applied for the status of a signatory of the World Anti-Doping Code,” according to the IOC.
