Boxing Fed Aims for Media Punch

(ATR) Olympic boxing federation AIBA hopes to score some points with media in the fight to remain the Olympic governing body for the sport.

Federation executive director Tom Virgets will lead a presentation Tuesday at the AIBA headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. The briefing is part of AIBA’s strategy to counter grave doubts from the IOC as to whether AIBA will manage Olympic boxing at the Tokyo Games and beyond.

The International Boxing Federation has been recognized by the IOC since 1946. That’s in question after a series of controversies beginning with a judging and referee debacle at the Rio Olympics. In 2017 the federation was turned upside down with word that it faced bankruptcy due to more than $10 million of debt. After securing the resignation of C.K. Wu as president just over a year ago, the federation has elected a successor who has been rejected by the IOC.

Gafur Rakhimov was the overwhelming choice in a two-man race for the presidency at the AIBA Congress in Moscow last November. He was elected despite repeated warnings from the IOC that it was concerned about the reputational impact of his election, not only on boxing but on other sports in the Olympics.

Rakhimov is in the midst of a legal appeal to remove his name from a list of suspected Russian organized crime figures published by the U.S.Treasury Department. Rakhimov says he’s been placed on the list as a result of political maneuverings in his native Uzbekistan. He denies any links to criminal activity.

AIBA has been under official IOC watch since late 2017 when funding was cut off and the federation suspended from organizing Olympic tournaments as well as from most contact with the IOC, other than to resolve the issues at hand.

The briefing by Virgets, a retired athletics director from the U.S.Naval Academy, comes as AIBA prepares to respond to dozens of questions posed by an IOC ad hoc panel. Led by IOC Executive Board member Nenad Lalovic, the three-member group is to report to the EB, perhaps at the meeting scheduled in late March. The ad hoc group is to recommend whether AIBA should be stripped of its Olympic affiliation. Such a disciplinary action has never been conducted against a recognized federation since the IOC was founded in 1894.

Other members of the group are Richard Carrion, IOC member in Puerto Rico and Emma Terho, IOC athletes commission member from Finland. The group works under the wing of the IOC sports department led by Kit McConnell.

Should the ad hoc group recommend severing ties with AIBA, it would still be up to the Executive Board and the IOC Session in June to affirm that move. Even that will not in itself end Olympic boxing, as it will only be the federation and not the sport itself that is being cut from the Olympic family.

If AIBA is removed, that it will be up to the IOC to figure out how to manage the sport in Tokyo 2020 and future games. Other organizations in the boxing world have mentioned a passing interest in handling the Olympic tournament.

A group from Kazakhstan is said to be among those boxing groups with an eye on taking over from AIBA, which has formed its own task force to counter the challenge. The group from the Kazakh national federation has written to IOC sports director Kit McConnell volunteering its expertise.

AIBA says it views the actions from the Kazakhs as sabotage and is urging the IOC to reject the offer from what AIBA labels as a rogue group. There is a hint of regional politics involved as Rakhimov’s rival in the election last November is from the central Asia giant that borders Uzbekistan

Rakhimov acknowledges the difficulties that the federation must surmount with the IOC.

"We are ready to cooperate with our Olympic partners and will do our best to clarify any outstanding misunderstandings," he said following a meeting of the fed leadership earlier this month in Istanbul.

"Query after query, report after report have been completed and active change has been initiated. Yet again, more information is being asked of the new AIBA leadership who has made great efforts to turn this organization around," he said.

"AIBA is healthy and in better shape than ever before. It is time to get back to focusing on the boxers and the development of the sport of boxing," he continued.

"Our Boxers are waiting, they still don’t know when, where or how to qualify for the Olympic Games next year. They must be our priority. We are ready to move on from the bad past, we hope that our Olympic friends think the same," said the AIBA leader.

Reported by Ed Hula.