The future of boxing at the Olympic Games, after Paris 2024, could well be decided in the coming months. Unless the situation turns around, it should be closely linked to the first steps in the sporting movement of World Boxing, the new international body of the discipline.
Created last April by a handful of dissident IBA leaders, World Boxing is still evolving in a provisional form. Its governance, an executive committee of around ten members, is still temporary. But things should change quickly.
The body based in Renens, a commune in the Swiss canton of Vaud, very officially launched, by a letter to the national boxing federations, a call for applications for the positions of president, vice-president (three seats), and member of the executive committee (four seats), plus a handful of other positions in future committees on the organizational chart. Deadline to apply: Friday August 25.
The elections, the first since the creation of World Boxing, will take place during the body's congress. It is announced for the month of November 2023, in a location yet to be determined.
Clarification: World Boxing wants to apply the rule of parity. In her letter, she insists on the need to have representation of both sexes at the highest level of governance.
The profile of the applicants, their background and their integrity, will be analyzed by an independent firm before the publication of a final list, no later than 30 days before the congress.
A detail that is anything but anecdotal: candidates must, to be selected, be supported by their national federation, which must be a member of World Boxing, at least an associate member, at the time of the congress.
To this day, the new boxing body is still struggling to expand its base. Three countries – the United States, Switzerland and New Zealand – have officially left the IBA to join World Boxing. A handful of others, including Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands, are expected to quickly join them.
For the others, nothing has been done yet. But the call for applications launched by World Boxing could accelerate the pace and provoke, among the most motivated, the convening of a general assembly called to validate a departure from the IBA and a joining of World Boxing.
Question: who will occupy the brand new seat of president of World Boxing next November? The candidates have not yet made themselves known. But at least two names are circulating: the Dutchman Boris van der Vorst, dismissed by the Russian Umar Kremlev during the last election for president of the IBA, and the American Tyson Lee, current president of USA Boxing. Both men are members of the provisional executive committee of World Boxing.
The stakes are not small. Once elected, the president and his inner circle will have to knock on the door of the IOC to try to start a dialogue with the Olympic body. Secondly, they will need to obtain recognition, which was withdrawn from the IBA last June. And finally, the final stage of a course already mapped out with precise actions, they will have to succeed in guaranteeing the future of boxing at the Olympic Games. The reason for being of World Boxing.
