Paris, Aug 11: The nascent governing body fighting to keep boxing in the Olympics is about to get a major membership boost.
World Boxing expects to expand its membership base to 50 national federations or more in the weeks after the conclusion of the tumultuous Paris Olympics, President Boris Van Der Vorst told The Associated Press. The organization already has 37 members, including most of the top Western national federations.
Van Der Vorst said he is leaving Paris even more confident his sport can pull off “the greatest comeback story ever in the Olympic movement.” Van Der Vorst has spent the Games speaking to boxing leaders and federation officials as World Boxing attempts to unify the sport under the only practical alternative to the Russian-dominated International Boxing Association, which has been banished from the Olympic movement.
World Boxing must court each federation individually to accomplish this seismic change to the sport – and the clock is ticking.Boxing is not currently on the program for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and the International Olympic Committee has repeatedly said the sport must find a suitable new governing body – likely by early 2025 – to be restored to the lineup for the Games. An IOC unit ran the past two Olympic boxing tournaments.
“There’s only one reason to join (World Boxing), and that’s to save our sport,” Van Der Vorst told the AP on Saturday.Five years after the IBA was barred from the Olympics, the group improbably returned to the spotlight in Paris with its claims against boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, saying both failed murky eligibility tests for women’s boxing at last year’s world championships.
Amid a worldwide storm of criticism and uninformed speculation, Khelif and Lin both went on to win gold medals in the best performances of their boxing careers.After repeating its claims without revealing any actual evidence, the IBA held a bizarre news conference Monday in Paris during which its president, Umar Kremlev, spent more time ranting against IOC President Thomas Bach over Zoom than answering questions about the boxers.
Van Der Vorst knows all about the IBA’s current leadership problems. He ran for its presidency in 2022, only to be barred from the election by Kremlev in a sketchy move that was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, to no avail. (AP)
