Open letter to new IOC President Kirsty Coventry
IOC SHOULD STOP COLONISING INDEPENDENT NATIONAL BOXING FEDERATIONS
Hi Kirsty
Congratulations on your resounding victory in the IOC elections. I hope my open letter finds you in good health as you plan on relocating to Lausanne, Switzerland.
I will dwell on the confusion the IOC has caused by demanding that National Federations affiliated to the International Boxing Association (IBA) must move to World Boxing (WB) to enable them to participate in the Olympic Games.
I advice you to change this directive immediately because it doesn’t make sense at all. As much as we know the IOC has an axe to grind with IBA concerning governance issues and questionable officiating among others.
IOC prides itself on a very fundamental issue of Fairplay in your governance but you have now dug your heads in the sand to deny NFs their freedom of association. Is that Fairplay?
IOC should let NFs decide which international body they want to be associated with instead of dangling the Olympic Games carrot to force them join WB.
Take note IBA has been in existence since 1946. It’s the mother and father of world boxing but just because some selfish IOC members were against its Russian leadership in the wake of the Ukraine war, you chose to suffocate its existence until you kicked IBA out of the IOC family.
Yet as you know the IOC itself has its own skeletons in the cupboard but you chose to remove the speck in the eye of IBA forgetting of your own inadequacies.
Kirsty, I believe you have come to IOC leadership independently but not as a stooge of the outgoing President Thomas Bach. Therefore the boxing fraternity expects you to operate professionally putting aside the tiff between IOC and IBA.
Don’t punish innocent boxers because of your personal differences with IBA. Let all boxers take part in the Olympic qualifiers irrespective of their affiliation.
In any case IOC is now allowing professional boxers to participate in the Olympics, and they will do so without being affiliated to World Boxing. So, why force others to join WB?
We know the wicked motive of IOC is to finish IBA which to me is retrogressive and selfish given that WB alone cannot satisfy the needs of thousands of boxers worldwide.
Right now, some NFs are in a tight corner on what path they should take regarding your undemocratic position of forcing them to join WB in order to participate in the Olympic boxing tournament.
For your information, Olympics has lost its lustre of yesteryears and is no longer competitive as it used to be because the IOC has watered down the competition by reducing weight divisions, thus denying some boxers their right to take part in the Games.
Against this background, and for the interest of the African boxers, I’m humbly requesting you and WB to ensure all the weight classes are reinstated and let boxers participate in the Olympics freely without forcing their NFs move to WB.
I hope to get your response soon because I know this letter will reach you. The world is now a small village.
Stand firm as the new sheriff in town, and if need be take the bull by horns. Most important is for the IOC to stop COLONISING independent NFs to shift to WB just because of the Olympics. IOC should foster unity and friendship in sports. Put aside your hatred on IBA and join forces to develop boxing worldwide. Right now there is no sports body which is 💯 perfect. You all have your skeletons.
