The International Olympic Committee (IOC) wants to keep boxing on the program for the Los Angeles 2028 Games. This was announced today by the president of the organization, Thomas Bach, reports BTA. In June 2023, the IOC session revoked the membership of the International Boxing Association (IBA), as the federation, deprived of the right to hold the Olympic qualifications in 2019, could not solve financial and management problems. The task of organizing and holding the Olympic boxing tournament at the Paris Games was taken over by the IOC.
"I can confirm that we would like to keep boxing in the Olympic program. As for the prospects for boxing - there will be them. But this will happen if there is a reliable international federation, with proper reputation and management, as well as financial transparency. And this is a matter for the national federations, everything is in their hands. If they want their athletes to win medals, they have to do it," Thomas Bach said.
Bach also commented that the "hate speech" aimed at boxers Imane Helif and Lin Yu-tin at the Olympics was "completely unacceptable".
„We will not participate in politically motivated . . . culture war," Bach said at a briefing. Khelief from Algeria and Lin from Taiwan were subjected to attacks and negative comments. The two were disqualified from last year's World Championships after failing the gender identity test.
"We are talking about women's boxing, we have two competitors, both born women. They grew up as women and their passports say they are women. There was never any doubt that they were women, and today someone is trying to change the definition of the word "woman,", Bach commented. Both Heliffe and Lin competed in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, but did not win medals.
The president of the IOC considers the harassment of the two athletes who did not pass the gender identity test to be unacceptable. "You journalists need to put an end to this,", Bach added.
"We stripped the International Boxing Federation of status for a number of reasons, so I don't know how relevant it is to talk about it now. There was a smear campaign against France as the organizer of the Olympics and against the IOC. There were various comments in this context, I will not repeat it. So that says a lot about the credibility of the information coming from this federation that has lost international recognition," Bach concluded.