IBA should be responsible for Olympic qualifications, IOC should seek our permission: President Umar Kremlev

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New Delhi, Mar 14: The tug-of-war between International Boxing Association (IBA) and International Olympic Committee (IOC) over organising Olympic qualification championships went a step further with IBA president Umar Kremlev on Tuesday (March 14) claiming that no such events could be held without taking the world boxing body's permission.

The Russian - who is in India ahead of the Women's World Championships - maintained that the two world bodies need to amicably "coordinate and cooperate" and resolve all the issues.

While interacting with media persons at the press conference organised in New Delhi on the eve of the World Championships - which didn't get the Olympic qualification status from the IOC - Kremlev said, "IBA is the main association that should be responsible for the Olympic qualification and the World Championships before the Olympics Games.

"The IBA will conduct all the qualification systems and championships. Our organisation has the responsibility to organise and host any championship for the qualification system in the future."

In his strong rebuttal to the IOC's latest ruling, the Russian said, "Qualification championships can go through the IBA and if the IOC wants to host any of these championships it has to ask first."

In December 2022, the global Olympic body's executive board continued its suspension of IBA citing concerns about its governance, financial transparency and sustainability and the integrity of refereeing and judging processes.

The IOC had also told the IBA that it would be organising boxing qualification events in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics in 2024.

The IOC EB on September 2022, in its new boxing qualification rule, approved the postponed Asian Games as the first Olympic qualifiers for the Asian countries.

Once the continental phase of the quota place allocation gets over, the IOC will host two world qualification tournaments in 2024.

However, IBA, last month, issued a statement claiming it "has taken upon itself as the international governing body of boxing to provide a clear process and pathway for its athletes to qualify for Paris 2024."

The world boxing body declared that the upcoming IBA-run Women's and Men's World Championships in New Delhi and Tashkent respectively will be the "main qualification events".

But the IOC rejected IBA's claim giving rise to confusion about whether the Women's World Championship, starting here on Wednesday (March 15), will have Olympic quotas or not.

Kremlev further claimed, "We are not doing the qualification system for the Olympic Games in the future for now. We just offered that IBA conducts the qualification system."

"We don't pretend to be the IOC and tell them what to do regarding the Olympics but we have this rule that IBA should be responsible for hosting these qualification tournaments before the Games."

He asserted that all the qualification tournaments should be managed by IBA and in order to quell concerns over IBA's integrity of refereeing and judging processes, an international observer body will also be present in New Delhi.

"We should be sure that all the qualification tournaments should be managed by IBA. Nobody can organise the qualification without IBA's permission. We just need to coordinate that's all.

"There is no dispute that IOC will control this qualification tournament, but not just by themselves, we need to cooperate with each other.

"As you can see we have invited many neutral experts such as Professor McLaren. IOC will also be here and review our work here," he signed off.

The IOC will be sending a monitoring team for the marquee event in Delhi.