The Olympic boxing soap opera is picking up speed. He also invites a new actor. According to a source “ close to the file », quoted by the agency Reuters, the International Boxing Federation (IBA) will not let the IOC withdraw its recognition without putting on the gloves one last time. The body chaired by the Russian Umar Kremlev has already taken the decision to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
At this stage, the IBA's approach remains only hypothetical. The withdrawal of its recognition by the IOC has not yet been formalized. It was recommended by the executive commission at the beginning of June. But the final decision will come back to the session of the Olympic body, which must meet remotely, exceptionally, Thursday June 22.
There is little doubt that the session will decide in favor of the executive commission's proposal. She rarely deviates from it. And one should not risk it in the case of boxing, a discipline whose governance is extremely annoying in the Olympic movement.
As a reminder, the IOC session did not lift a finger to oppose the suspension of the AIBA, now IBA, decided by the IOC in June 2019. Unless there is an improbable turnaround, it will maintain the same line of action. conducted at the end of next week, when it is time to more permanently seal the fate of the IBA.
The question will therefore pass into the hands of the CAS. With what options? Difficult to answer. The court based in Lausanne lacks precedents on such a matter. The IOC is not in the habit of withdrawing its recognition, and with it its subsidies, from an international federation of an Olympic sport. Boxing is not the first arrival. It is even one of the oldest, included in the program since the third edition, organized in Saint-Louis in 1904.
The only near certainty: the procedure will not be done in one day. It could last several months. The IBA will challenge the IOC's decision on both substance and form. The body has never minced its words with regard to the Olympic organization. When the recent recommendation of the executive commission was announced, she mentioned a decision “ odious and purely political. » In her last report, submitted at the beginning of June, she considered that the IOC had increased the number of low blows and false declarations against her.
Another near certainty: a long and inevitably uncertain appeal procedure before the CAS should accelerate the departure of national federations and their joining the new international body, World Boxing. To date, the United States and Switzerland have already taken the plunge, Great Britain has announced its decision to follow them.
New Zealand and the Netherlands have also expressed their intention to change sides soon. Sweden and Germany, two other countries behind the creation of World Boxing, should quickly leave the IBA. Ireland, for its part, has just announced via a press release that the decision to join World Boxing belonged to its clubs and would not be discussed before the next general assembly, scheduled for October.
