The boxing competition at the Paris Olympics is over, but the fight now begins for its inclusion in the 2028 LA Games after a damaging gender controversy placed the sport under renewed scrutiny.
Boxing has been a staple of the modern Olympics, making its debut in 1904 and featuring at every Games since, except in 1912.
Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Floyd Mayweather, and Lennox Lewis, to name just a few, all began their careers at the Olympics.
Boxing at the Paris Games took place in mostly packed venues. However, when the Los Angeles Olympics comes around in four years, it is not certain that it will be on the programme.
This uncertainty existed even before a gender eligibility row erupted in the French capital, overshadowing the action in the ring and only adding to the scrutiny of the sport and its governance.
“I think it has hurt Olympic boxing at a crucial time when its future is still being discussed,” Steve Bunce, a veteran British boxing journalist, said on the BBC. “It’s an absolute disaster.”
Spencer Oliver, a British former boxer who was in Paris as a radio pundit, agrees. “It’s just a mess because boxing comes into the spotlight again,” Oliver told AFP. “But it’s for the wrong reason.”
Gender Row
At the heart of boxing’s problems is a protracted and open dispute between the International Olympic Committee and the Russian-led International Boxing Association.
Boxing at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021 only went ahead after the IOC stepped in to oversee it. The IOC again organised the sport in Paris, effectively freezing the IBA out of the Olympic movement.
IOC president Thomas Bach has warned that boxing’s national federations need to find a new and “reliable” international partner for the IOC to ensure the sport features in the 2028 programme. Bach stated on Friday that the decision on boxing’s inclusion would be made in the first half of 2025.
The clock is ticking.
The IBA’s main contribution in Paris was a chaotic press conference intended to clarify why it disqualified Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting from its world championships last year.
IBA president Umar Kremlev, a Kremlin-linked oligarch, claimed that the two fighters had undergone “genetic testing that shows that these are men.” The IOC cleared them to compete and expressed doubts about the IBA’s testing and motivations.
Khelif won gold on Friday and afterward declared, “I am a woman like any other.” She added, “They hate me and I don’t know why,” referring to the IBA. “I sent them a message with this medal.”
Taiwanese sports officials have threatened legal action against the IBA. Lin also won gold in her weight category.
‘Life-Changing’
Those within the sport say that excluding boxing from the Olympics would have far-reaching consequences.
Ireland’s Kellie Harrington, who retained her title in Paris, fears that countries will pull funding for their boxing programmes if the Olympics are no longer a target.
“That would be a crying shame. I think everybody needs to do a little bit more to keep it there,” she told Britain’s Sun newspaper.
Oliver noted how many of Britain’s top professional boxers, including former heavyweight world champion Anthony Joshua, used the Olympics as a springboard to success.
“The Olympics made Joshua,” he said. “The Olympics are great for the boxers because they get recognised, and it’s the grassroots for them. Then they can go on and earn a lot of money, so it’s life-changing.”
Despite what he describes as “an absolute mess” in the governance of the sport, Oliver believes it is unthinkable that boxing would be excluded from the Olympics.
“I think the Olympics without boxing would be a shame. It would be very, very sad,” said Oliver. “So I’m hoping that they can sort out all the politics that go on behind the scenes, and boxing continues. I’m sure it will.”
AFP
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