Olympic Boxing Fed Faces Uncertain Future

(ATR) With dire warnings and talk of a crisis, the IOC approves a boxing plan for Tokyo 2020.

On the final day of the IOC Session in Lausanne, the IOC approved plans to take over control of Olympic boxing at the 2020 Olympics.

National Olympic Committees and national boxing federations will be responsible for selecting IOC-run boxing qualification tournaments and the IOC will use referees in the database from AIBA, the international boxing federation.

While a clear path forward was lined out, Wednesday’s vote is merely the latest episode for a federation that has been dogged for decades by recurring reform efforts, poor management and allegations of malfeasance.

Financial issues are a key burden for AIBA. Nenad Lalovic, head of an IOC inquiry commission told the IOC Session that by 2021 the federation would be $30 million in debt.

Lalovic, IOC member and president of United World Wrestling federation says AIBA must act "very fast." In 2013, Lalovic was named president of the wrestling federation when it faced being cut from Tokyo over a range of issues .

"We do not provide long-term solutions we provide the possibilities," Lalovic said describing his group’s work during the first half of this year.

"The long-term solution relies on the international federation. They have to be ready to take care of their own sport after the Tokyo Games. If they don’t succeed and thisalso relies on the national federations...their future won’t be bright."

IOC doyen Richard Pound suggested that the damage AIBA had done to the Olympic Movement is substantial and that "the future of Olympic boxing may not involve AIBA".

Morinari Watanabe, IOC member and president of the International Gymnastics Federation leads the task force now overseeing boxing at the Tokyo Olympics.

He tried to temper any talk of AIBA’s future exclusionresponding: "I want it to be an Olympic sport--I love boxing."

Watanabe noted: "A crisis is an opportunity in business."

The IOC first took action against AIBA in late 2017, suspending payments to the federation while the group tried to reorganize. In November 2018, against the counsel of the IOC, AIBA elected Gafur Rakhimov as president. The Uzbek-born Russian businessman is a longtime supporter of boxing in Asia. But he is also on a list of suspected Russian organized crime figures from the U.S. Treasury Department. He is prohibited from travel to the U.S. and other nations, including Switzerland, where the AIBA headquarters are located.

Rakhimov stood down as president in March, but AIBA’s woes are manifold.

Leaders of the federation will meet in Lausanne June 27 to consider the next steps they might take to avoid a total collapse. The IOC has indicated that any new incarnation of the federation, formed in 1946, cannot include any individuals in the current leadership. An internal memo to the AIBA leadership circulated this month says that the federation has but $400,000 in the bank and faces certain bankruptcy.

Written and reported in Lausanne by Ed Hula

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