● From our sister site, TheSportsExaminer.com ●
“The sham election on Saturday was a brazen power grab, with nothing ‘democratic’ about the process. IBA did not even bother to have an actual vote as Kremlev was the only eligible candidate. The Russian was duly ushered into another term, standing ‘unopposed’, like they did in the former Soviet Union.
“The National Federations should be in no doubt. The spectacle they witnessed in Istanbul is the end of IBA as the organiser of Olympic boxing.”
That’s how the British boxing news site WorldBoxing.Today described the “election” of Russia’s Umar Kremlev to a four-year term as the head of the International Boxing Association at an Extraordinary Congress held Friday and Saturday in Istanbul (TUR) on the sidelines of the Women’s World Championships.
Kremlev was slated to run against Dutch Boxing Federation President Boris van der Vorst – who with four other Board candidates from the U.S., Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand – were cleared by the IBA Disciplinary Committee on the 11th and then disqualified by the “Interim Nomination Board” of the Boxing Independent Integrity Unit on the 12th!
The election was scheduled for Friday the 13th, but was delayed by Kremlev to allow for an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport that van de Vorst claimed was filed, but was apparently dismissed and not heard.
Van der Vorst will undoubtedly file a full appeal of the election to the CAS. In the interim, the five disqualified candidates were not on the ballot and a full slate of directors was named for a four-year term. This included former American fighter Elise Seignolle, who was the leading vote-getter with 106 and a Chinese and Ukrainian candidate.
The International Olympic Committee has repeatedly complained about the IBA’s governance, finances and its program for refereeing and judging, and the IOC Executive Board is scheduled to meet on Wednesday and Thursday of this week (18-19). The IOC’s statement:
“The events surrounding IBA’s general assembly, in particular the elections, merit careful analysis and are just reinforcing the questions and doubts around IBA’s governance.”
Don’t think for a moment that Kremlev doesn’t know the situation. In the first meeting of the new Board, politics reigned as Ukraine’s Volodymyr Prodyvus was named Vice President and the U.S.’s Seignolle was named as a member of the Finance Committee.
The IOC will not be impressed at the clever maneuvering to eliminate van der Vorst and the other Board candidates. The question will be, how should the IOC move forward?
There are multiple options:
● It can maintain boxing as a sport for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, but run the qualifying program and Olympic competition itself as it did for Tokyo 2020. In this scenario, the IBA will receive no share of the IOC’s television revenue for Paris.
● It can remove boxing from the Paris 2024 program, especially since the qualification for Paris has not yet started. However, this penalizes the boxers themselves, something the IOC is loath to do (but more on this below).
● It can confirm that boxing will not be a part of the Los Angeles 2028 Games, since the IBA cannot even certify its candidates up to one day prior to its elections, not to mention its financial troubles and continuing concerns over refereeing and judging.
● It can expel the IBA as the international federation for Olympic boxing and organize a new federation, or,
● Just expel the IBA and remove boxing for the Olympic program – it has been a part of the Games since 1904 – for good.
For the IOC, there are other issues with the sport of boxing itself which are at odds with the mission of the Olympic Movement. Is a sport which involves striking another person as hard as possible really compatible with today’s Olympic concept of peace and unity?
The other martial arts now in the Games are not striking sports, except for Taekwondo, in which the athletes are heavily padded from head to foot; that’s not the case in boxing. Judo and wrestling are about throwing and grappling, not hitting.
Moreover, boxing as a sport does not depend on the Olympic Games. There are multiple, lively professional circuits in the sport, not to mention Mixed Martial Arts, to which boxers can aspire and which have nothing to do with the Olympic Movement. Removing boxing from the Olympic Games will not implode the sport; this is an important reality and not to be underestimated.
And, considering (1) the IOC’s desire to adapt the Games to younger audiences and (2) its agreement to strictly limit the number of athletes to 10,500 in all future Games, is there a better use for the 248 athlete places than for boxing in Paris, Los Angeles and beyond?
As WorldBoxing.Today put it: “there can be no route back for the sport as long as IBA controls it.”
~ Rich Perelman
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