If IOC want to conduct Olympic qualifiers, they should ask us: IBA president Umar Kremlev

New Delhi: International Boxing Association (IBA) president Umar Kremlev on Tuesday asserted that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) can’t hold Olympic qualifying championships without taking the world boxing body’s permission.

The Russian added that the two world bodies need to “coordinate and cooperate” with each other and resolve all issues.

“IBA is the main association that should be responsible for the Olympic qualification and the World Championships before the Olympics Games,” Kremlev told reporters ahead of the women’s World Championship.

“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.”

“Qualification championships can go through the IBA and if the IOC wants to host any of these championships it has to ask first,” he added.

The IOC’s executive board had in December last year decided against lifting the suspension on the IBA due to concerns around its governance, financial transparency and sustainability and the integrity of refereeing and judging processes.

The IOC had also informed the IBA that it would conduct boxing qualification events leading up to the Paris Olympics.

According to the new boxing qualification approved by the IOC EB on September 2022, the postponed Asian Games will be the first qualifiers for the Asian countries.

Following the continental phase of the quota place allocation, two world qualification tournaments will be held in 2024.

However last month, IBA issued a statement saying 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 body declared that the upcoming IBA-run women and men’s World Championships in New Delhi and Tashkent respectively will be the “main qualification events”.

But the IOC has since rejected IBA’s claim, which gave rise to confusion about whether the Women’s World Championship, starting here on Wednesday, will have Olympic quotas or not.

“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.

“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,” Kremlev added.

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

“As you can see we have invited many neutral experts such as Professor McLaren. IOC will also be here and review our work here.”

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