IBA won’t let go – Sport – Kommersant

The International Boxing Association (IBA) has not ruled out filing a lawsuit against the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IBA is outraged that the IOC, without obtaining the consent of the association, invited judges and technical staff of the IBA to work in the qualifying tournaments for the 2024 Olympics. According to the leadership of the boxing federation, this is a violation of previously signed agreements. The IBA has been under sanctions for several years, and the Olympic boxing tournament in Paris 2024 by the IOC, as well as in Tokyo 2020, intends to be held independently.

The protracted conflict between the International Olympic Committee and the International Boxing Association continued. The IBA, headed by Russian Umar Kremlev, published open letter to the IOC President Thomas Bach and the executive committee of the organization he leads. The letter notes that the IBA reserves the right to sue the IOC and seek damages for violation of the Data Transfer Agreement signed between the IBA and the IOC in 2019.

The IBA was outraged that the IOC, bypassing the association, invited judges and technical staff of the IBA to work in the qualifying tournaments for the 2024 Olympics (the IOC does not have its own staff with sufficient qualifications to work in boxing tournaments of this level). “These actions violate the data transfer agreement signed in November 2019 between the IBA and the IOC, in particular paragraph 4.1 b, according to which “the transferred personal data (contact data) will not be stored for longer than is necessary for the agreed purposes and will be completely and irreversibly destroyed after the implementation of the agreement,” the IBA said in a statement.

The Boxing Association believes that the actions of the IOC “destroy the efforts of the IBA” and are simply dishonest. At the same time, judges who still accept the IOC proposal are threatened with sanctions in the IBA.

The letter also condemns the methods of management used in the IOC, and expresses dissatisfaction with the fact that the leadership of the Olympic movement evades the normalization of relations with the boxing federation.

The conflict between the IBA and the IOC has been going on since 2019. Then the IOC withdrew recognition of the IBA, which was experiencing a deep administrative and financial crisis, and removed it from organizing a boxing tournament at the Tokyo Olympics, later extension suspension for the next Olympic cycle. Shortly thereafter, the federation was headed by Umar Kremlev, and the situation in it began to improve. In particular, the debt issue was resolved, and a number of important reforms were initiated. However, relations between the IBA and the IOC did not improve, but escalated.

In May 2022 Umar Kremlev was re-elected to the presidency, but the IOC actually refused to recognize the election results. The IOC has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the actions of the IBA, and also threatened with new sanctions. In particular, boxing has not yet been officially included in the program of the 2028 Games, and it is likely that this sport will not be represented at the Los Angeles Olympics at all.

The IBA, however, was little influenced by the position of the IOC. For example, last fall it became the first major sports organization to radically change its position on the isolation of Russian and Belarusian athletes, canceling all sanctions imposed on them after the start of a special military operation in Ukraine based on the recommendations of the IOC. We add that in March of this year, the International Fencing Federation joined the IBA, also allowed Russians and Belarusians to return to international tournaments (however, it is not yet clear under which flag – their own or neutral).

Alexander Petrov