Por Rory Carroll
PARIS, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Boxing still has a chance of competing at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics but will first have to resolve a bitter dispute over its governance, LA28 CEO Casey Wasserman told Reuters on Sunday.
The “sweet science” has been a nearly ubiquitous discipline at the Olympics, but it is not on the Los Angeles programme after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stripped the International Boxing Association (IBA) of its recognition last June.
“The history of boxing in the United States and the Olympic Games is really powerful and important,” Wasserman said in Paris.
“The popularity of boxing in the United States is significant and its ability to engage children of all socioeconomic backgrounds is powerful and important.”
“We have always said that we have to find a way to include boxing in the 2028 Games, but as we sit here today (…) it is not in our programme and we do not have a venue for it.”
The IOC has banned the IAB from organising boxing tournaments at the Tokyo and Paris Games on transparency grounds, sparking a war of words between the two bodies.
The IOC has asked federations to work together to designate a credible international federation and World Boxing currently appears best placed to play that role.
“The IOC wants to make sure that boxing finds its way to stability as a federation so that it can have a permanent place at the Games without all this back and forth,” Wasserman said.
The AIB’s decision to award prize money to boxers at the Paris Games has opened another rift in relations between the two bodies.
In another disagreement between the two, gender testing by the IAB on two female boxers during last year’s world championships, which had repercussions in Paris when a social media storm erupted around the two athletes, was condemned by the IOC on Sunday as illegitimate and lacking credibility.
Wasserman said that although boxing is on the ropes, it is not lost.
“The agreement we have with boxing is that if they create a situation where they have resolved the federation’s problems, then they will come to our program,” he said.
“It’s the only sport that has a unique treatment because of the unique circumstances.”
“All 36 of our sports are closed. If boxing is in, it will be 37th. If not, it will be 36th.” (Reporting by Rory Carroll in Paris; additional reporting by Aadi Nair; editing by Clare Fallon)
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