Olympic boxing risks being reduced to a mere youth tournament if the International Boxing Association remains excluded as the sport’s governing body, IBA President Umar Kremlev warned Monday.
Speaking to Reuters via a translator, the Russian official said the IBA – suspended by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2019 and formally stripped of recognition in 2023 – is now entering what he called a “golden era” on its own terms.
“For boxers, the priority will be to compete in the world championships and IBA tournaments,” Kremlev said via a Zoom call. “The Olympics will become a platform for children – it’s a youth-level event.”
“It’s like comparing football’s FIFA World Cup with the Olympics,” he added. “The Olympic Games are not driving the development of the sport – the international federation does that.
“The IBA tournaments, especially the world championships, should be the pinnacle of the sport, while the Olympic tournaments should run in parallel, serving more as a stage for the younger generation.”
Speaking on the day former Zimbabwean swimmer Kirsty Coventry took the helm of the IOC from Thomas Bach, Kremlev criticized the German in derogatory terms and offered no conciliatory remarks to either leader.
He said future IOC presidents should be elected by countries rather than individual IOC members, and added that Coventry should “leave no trace of Bach.”
Kremlev has a history of attacking the IOC and Bach, including at the Paris Games last August in a lengthy and contentious press conference that drew a sharp response from the Olympic organization.
“If you ever needed any evidence at all that the IBA is unfit to run boxing, just look at the key members of the IBA who took part in that travesty,” IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said at the time.
Kremlev also repeated his call for Olympic athletes to be paid prize money.
He directed scorn toward World Boxing, the rival body created in 2023 that now has more than 100 members and is set to organize the 2028 Olympic boxing tournament after the IOC ran the last two editions.
“Nobody should compare this particular organization with the IBA, because the IBA is a huge elephant and this organization is a fly – a small insect who doesn’t live,” said Kremlev.
The boxing competition at the Paris 2024 Games is being run by the IOC after it stripped the IBA of recognition for failing to implement reforms on governance and financial transparency.
Despite that, the IBA has announced it will award prize money to boxers competing in Paris.
Kremlev said more details about the IBA’s future plans would be shared at a press conference in Istanbul on July 2.
He also gave an update on legal action – first threatened in February – against the IOC for allowing Algerian gold medalist Imane Khelif to compete in the women’s tournament at the Paris Games amid a gender-eligibility dispute.
Kremlev said the IBA’s legal team is still reviewing the case and plans to pursue it through civil courts rather than the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
