World Boxing eyes flood of members after Games

PARIS — 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 at least 50 national federations in the weeks after the conclusion of the 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 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 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.

But the longtime Dutch boxing executive refused to revel in the IBA’s pratfalls in Paris. He only reemphasized his determination for World Boxing to replace the IBA in the Olympic movement while still realizing his sport was cast in an unflattering light by the banned group’s antics.

“You have to realize we decided it is not a competition between us and the IBA,” Van Der Vorst said. “We have only one mission, and that is to keep boxing at the heart of the Olympic movement. We try to do what is best for the boxers and the national federations.”

Earlier in the tournament, Van Der Vorst told the AP his feelings about the controversy surrounding Khelif and Lin, who faced online bullying and worldwide scrutiny over the misconceptions about their womanhood.

“We have only one mission, and that is to keep boxing at the heart of the Olympic movement. We try to do what is best for the boxers and the national federations.”

World Boxing president Boris Van Der Vorst to The Associated Press

Van Der Vorst said he supports the right of Khelif and Lin to be in Paris under the criteria used by the IOC. World Boxing has a medical committee that will craft eligibility rules in the coming weeks and months, and Van Der Vorst said the group has taken notice of the changing attitudes and standards across other governing bodies of Olympic sports.

“It’s a complicated matter, and also for World Boxing, it’s very important that we already assigned our medical committee to engage experts,” Van Der Vorst said. “Taking care of the safety and integrity of the sport, those are the two most important items that should be addressed there. But it is a really complicated matter.”

World Boxing is also busy organizing three major tournaments in the coming months along with several smaller events while adding staff and continuing to create a long-range plan. The body is attempting to show its capability to be the sport’s authority with hopes of gaining approval from the IOC to organize the next Olympic cycle.

While World Boxing has added members regularly since its inception and boasts a presence on six continents, it still faces a major obstacle in the intransigence of many longtime IBA members who either rely financially on the banned body or align politically with its leadership.

It will be a challenge to recruit many key members, including some of the world’s top federations at the moment. Uzbekistan finished another outstanding Olympic cycle with five gold medals — the most by any nation in 20 years — while China racked up three golds and two silvers. Cuba, despite winning just two medals in Paris, remains one of the world’s most important boxing federations.

Nobody is sure what the IOC will think if World Boxing is unable to land some of the most successful federations, but Van Der Vorst is determined to keep working toward a challenging goal.

“I respect every decision from every national federation, and I understand the difficulties they are facing,” Van Der Vorst said. “You cannot imagine the challenges. We have had several setbacks, several difficulties, but we are absolutely convinced that our hand will be raised at the end of this year.”