Boxing ‘one step closer’ to 2028 Olympics inclusion

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has approved of World Boxing as its pro-active international federation.

The biggest obstacle to boxing’s inclusion in the upcoming Games was the fact that it is not currently included in Los Angeles 2028’s schedule, which was due to the creation of a new global body.

The IOC has run boxing at the past two Olympics after the International Boxing Association (IBA) was suspended as the sport’s world governing body in 2019 over governance, finance, refereeing and ethical issues.

The Russian-led IBA was then stripped of its status in June 2023 over a failure to implement set reforms.

World Boxing was formed in April 2023 and now has 78 members across five continents, including Great Britain.

According to an IOC statement, “World Boxing has continued to make progress in the identified areas of consideration.”

World Boxing has also attained sufficient members across five continents, according to the IOC, and has met a number of important requirements to qualify for provisional recognition.

World Boxing’s president, Boris van der Vorst, stated that “retaining its place at the Olympic Games is absolutely crucial to the future of our sport from the grassroots to the highest echelons of professional boxing,” and that this decision by the IOC brings us one step closer to achieving our goal of seeing boxing reinstated to the Olympic program.

Everyone involved in World Boxing is aware that being a part of the Olympic movement is a privilege and a responsibility, not a right. “It] is a significant milestone, but everyone involved in World Boxing is.

Everyone is as determined as ever to work together and do everything in their power to ensure that boxing remains at the heart of the Olympic movement and that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Apart from removing its status, the IOC was also at loggerheads with the IBA during Paris 2024 over the participation of two female boxers, Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting.