JAKARTA Former world heavyweight champion and 1996 Olympic gold medalist Wladimir Klitschko, hopes that boxing sports (sports) will not be kicked out of the Olympics.
The sport is threatened with not being able to participate in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, United States, if until the beginning of next year it does not yet have a new international body.
Klitschko, through the latest video with a duration of 39 seconds, emphasized the importance of maintaining this sport in the world's most prestigious four-year event.
"Boxing is one of the most spectacular and oldest sports in the Olympic program," he was quoted as saying by Boxing Scene.
The boxing competition at the 2024 Paris Olympics which had just passed was run by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) after the International Boxing Association (IBA) was frozen for failing to implement governance and financial reforms.
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The problem made the IOC not include boxing sports in the Los Angeles 2028 program. They urged boxing federations to form new boxing bodies so that their sports could still be contested.
"Talking as the 1996 Olympic champion, I want to emphasize that boxing must be safe for Los Angeles 2028," said Klitschko.
In fact, a new boxing body called World Boxing was launched in 2023 and currently has 37 members or fewer than IBA members. However, this agency has not been recognized by the IOC.
World Boxing is driven by Britain and the United States who broke away from IBA last year. The agency is now led by the Dutch president, Boris van der Vorst.
The IOC suspended IBA in 2019 and then did not involve the agency in a boxing match at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics which was postponed for a year due to the corona pandemic. They then withdrew their confession of IBA in 2023.
The IOC and IBA clashed for days at the 2024 Paris Olympics regarding the participation of two female boxers, Imane Khelf from Algeria and Lin Yu-ting from China Taipei.
IBA previously banned the two names from competing in the 2023 World Championships after chromodynamic tests. They argued the two boxers did not qualify as female boxers, but the IOC allowed the two of them to compete.
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