The International Boxing Association (IBA) says that it will be awarding a purse for every medal in boxing at the Paris Olympics. Half will go to the athlete, a quarter to the national federation, and a quarter to the boxer’s coach. The purse will be $100,000 for gold, $50,000 for silver and $25,000 for bronze. Quarter finalists who advance no further will receive $10,000.
According to IBA President Umar Kremlev, this totals more than $3.1 million to be divided between more than 100 boxers. The IBA plans to hold a “special awards ceremony” for the medalists and says it will pay out the prize money once the athletes pass doping tests.
Moreover, Olympic finalists will be eligible to compete in the IBA World Championship, which has a prize fund of $13 million for 13 weight categories – seven for men and six for women.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is unhappy with this arrangement, just as it was back in April, when World Athletics – the world’s governing body for track and field – made an analogous announcement.
“Our athletes and their efforts must be appreciated,” Kremlev is quoted as saying in the IBA’s statement.
The IOC suspended the IBA in 2019 and revoked its status as boxing’s worldwide governing body in June 2023. This past April, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland) dismissed the IBA’s appeal.
World Athletics, which will be drawing its prize money from shared IOC revenue, has come in for no such sanctions.
The IOC’s response to the IBA’s prize-money plan is acerbic: “As always with the IBA, it is unclear where the money is coming from. This total lack of financial transparency was exactly one of the reasons why the IOC withdrew its recognition of the IBA. The IBA was not prepared to transparently explain the sources of its financing or to explain its full financial dependency, at the time, on a single state-owned company, Gazprom” – that is, the oil and gas company owned and operated by Russia.
The IOC goes on to say that it has shut the IBA out of the organization of the boxing tournaments for both the Tokyo and the Paris Games, that it has removed boxing from the program for the forthcoming Los Angeles Games (2028), and that it will disqualify for Los Angeles any boxer whose national federation is an IBA member.
The IBA has responded in kind: “This is an absolute travesty and disgrace from allegedly one of the leading sports organizations in the world.” It goes on to provide a “non-exhaustive” list of eight measures it has taken, each item ending with the phrase “The IOC says it is not enough and fails to recognize.”
A new federation, World Boxing, has arisen and to take the IBA’s place in the IOC’s good graces. Whether it will get boxing back on the Olympic program remains to be seen.
