The affair is above all symbolic, but it says a lot about the fight started by Russia and its ally Belarus for their athletes to return to the fold of world sport, a year after their banishment decided in the wake of the invasion. Ukraine, February 24, 2022. On Wednesday March 15, in New Delhi, India, the women’s amateur boxing world championships opened (until March 26), organized under the aegis of International Boxing Association (IBA), and Russians and Belarusians are allowed to compete there. What’s more with anthem and flag, in violation of resolutions taken by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) last year.
Admittedly, the case of the IBA and this competition is special. The federation, chaired by Russian Umar Kremlev, close to Vladimir Putin, and which benefits from the financial support of the Russian energy giant Gazprom, was suspended by the IOC in 2019 for financial and governance problems. The results of these Worlds will therefore not count in the race for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the qualifications being organized by the IOC, as for the Tokyo Games. Knowing that, moreover, the Olympic horizon of boxing is reduced: the IOC excluded it from the Los Angeles 2028 program and threatened to withdraw it from the Parisian edition.
However, the event embodies the tensions arising from the publication, on January 25, of an IOC roadmap marking out a possible return of Russian and Belarusian athletes, on condition of neutrality, in major international competitions. Eleven nations have thus decided to boycott this World Cup in India: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Ukraine, Poland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Czech Republic and Norway. France is present: as “host country of the next Olympic Games, we have every interest in remaining neutral”argued with Agence France-Presse, Dominique Nato, the president of the French Boxing Federation.
“Russia sets in motion its politico-sports response”decrypts Lukas Aubin, geopolitical scientist and country specialist. “If the geopolitical balance of power seems to be gradually reversing in favor of Russia, very clever whoever can say what the Olympics will be made of, he argued on Thursday morning on the social network Twitter. It is very difficult to imagine Paris 2024 without the Ukrainian athletes due to the boycott. The showdown has only just begun. »
1/7 Russia launches its politico-sports response. In Algiers, this weekend, African sports bodies voted… https://t.co/JBGDCq5YNs
Fencing opted for reinstatement
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