Boxing: IOC provisionally grants Olympic boxing to World Boxing

Boxing fans can breathe easy. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday granted "provisional" recognition to the young international federation World Boxing, lifting the mortgage that had weighed for years on the Olympic future of boxing .

By making World Boxing the body "governing boxing at the global level within the Olympic movement", the IOC executive board is at the same time closing the door to any return of the IBA, which has been banned since 2019 and which has had execrable relations with the Lausanne organisation.

Created in 2023, World Boxing currently only has 78 member federations, but "has provided proof that 62% of boxers and 58% of medallists at the Paris Olympics" were affiliated with these federations, while showing "progress" on governance criteria, lists the IOC.

The very young body, which counts among its main members the United States, Japan, Great Britain, France and Germany against only six African countries, should take over the organization of the Olympic boxing tournament at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

The retention of this sport, inherited from ancient pankration and present since the first modern Games in 1896, on the Olympic programme was in fact conditional on the IOC recognising an international federation capable of supervising it.

The IOC had twice had to take charge of the direct organisation of the Olympic tournament at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, after the suspension of the IBA, and then at the 2024 Paris Olympics, after its definitive exclusion from the Olympic movement.

Not only does the Lausanne organisation not intend to replace the role of an international federation in the long term, but the Paris boxing tournament has also been at the heart of a controversy triggered by the IBA over the gender of two competitors, the Algerian Imane Khelif and the Taiwanese Lin Yu-ting .