PUNISHMENT
CAS confirms ban of International Boxing Association from Olympics
IBA banned after years of disobeying IOC advice and instructions
Published on April 2, 2024 at 6:28 pm
Despite the decision, boxing remains on the Paris Olympics program Crédito: Shutterstock
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) confirmed the decision of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to exclude the International Boxing Association (IBA) from the Olympics, in an unprecedented decision. Last year, the IBA was banned after years of disobeying advice and instructions from the IOC, which had long cited concerns about boxing’s governance, dependence on money from Russian state energy company Gazprom and the integrity and transparency of fights.
Despite the punishment, boxing will remain on the program for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, but the IOC is overseeing the qualifiers and medal tournaments without IBA involvement, as it did for the 2021 Tokyo Games.
Russian IBA president Umar Kremlev said in November that they would appeal to Switzerland’s supreme court if they lost their appeal at CAS, the sport’s highest court, but the body announced on Tuesday that it had rejected the Association’s appeal because the organization “had not met the conditions established by the IOC for recognition”.
A CAS panel appointed to hear the appeal heard testimony from both sides in November and concluded that the IBA had not met the IOC’s conditions for recognition. “IBA has not increased its financial transparency and sustainability, including through revenue diversification,” the CAS statement said on Tuesday.
The document then states that the IBA “had not changed its process relating to referees and judges to ensure its integrity, including a monitoring period for AIBA’s own competitions prior to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games” and that the IBA had failed to implement governance reform measures “including a change of culture”.
“As a consequence, the panel determined that these three elements justified the decision of the Extraordinary Session of the IOC Executive Council to withdraw recognition of the IBA and emphasized that the right of the International Olympic Committee to control the circumstances and conditions under which it grants recognition outweighed the IBA’s personality rights”, as the statement points out. The IBA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
