The International Olympic Committee on Tuesday lifted its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee, a move that makes it all the more likely — probable — a full Russian team will compete at the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Games.
The decision Tuesday was inevitable.
Too, appropriate — and way past overdue, the key step in correction of a series of IOC actions taken after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that have constructively achieved, what?
Absolutely nothing.
“The kind of movement we want for the future must … be reflected in how we lead,” IOC president Kirsty Coventry said Wednesday amid her opening remarks to the assembly.
OK, so how is Kirsty Coventry leading? What is “Fit for the Future,” really?
How about a $10,000 “grant” for every Olympic athlete?
What about, though, a potential Hunger Games-style infighting for those sports - er, disciplines - fighting to stay on the Olympic program?
Yu-Ting Lin of Chinese Taipei, a gold medalist in women’s boxing at the 2024 Paris Olympics, took bronze Monday in the 2026 Asian continental boxing championships.
In Paris, Lin won the 57-kilogram class (just over 125 pounds) to become Taiwan’s first Olympic boxing champion. Heading toward two years later, Lin is now fighting at 60 kilos (132 pounds). The Asian championships were held in the capital of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar.
After Monday’s action, Lin’s coach, Tzu-Chiang Tseng, emphasized for the China News Agency the value of Lin fighting up a category: “After all, this is our first time competing in the 60-kilo division after the Olympics. The opponents’ skills, strategies and styles are all new to us, so we used this opportunity to observe and learn.”
This is not the story.
The story is, rather, how this could have been allowed to happen in the first instance.
The female category in sport is for women and girls – individuals with XX chromosomes.
Identity is not biology.
To pretend otherwise is not only to make a mockery of any notion of fairness but, in the case of boxing, risk serious injury or worse.
Now, with Algeria’s Imane Khelif said to be on the verge of returning to competition, World Boxing has announced that Khelif, winner of a gold medal at the Paris Games, must take a chromosome test to prove eligibility – in its words, undergo “mandatory sex testing.”
PARIS – If they had been running the tournament here at the Paris Games, International Boxing Assn. officials said Monday, the Algerian and Chinese Taipei fighters now in the medal rounds in women’s boxing, both figuring in a worldwide controversy, would never have been in the ring in the first instance.
That’s because, IBA officials said, both Algeria’s Imane Khelif and Yu Ting Lin of Chinese Taipei were disqualified at the 2023 IBA women’s world championships in New Delhi upon DNA tests that showed evidence of XY chromosomes – that is, a marker each is male.
The International Olympic Committee, which is overseeing Paris 2024 boxing, opted to base eligibility on an athlete’s passport. IBA officials suggested Monday that missed the mark, noting that as of June 2023, more than a year before these Paris Games, the IOC knew about the New Delhi DQs.
In boxing, asserted Gabriele Martelle, chair of the IBA coaches commission, “When there is an unfair advantage, people can die.” He also said, “We had two cases of disqualification,” adding a moment later, “They were publicly banned because of the rules.” And: “This is a sport. We have rules. If you cannot comply, I am sorry. It’s not discrimination. It’s just the rules.”
PARIS – The athlete who has ignited a worldwide controversy in Olympic women’s boxing was disqualified from the 2023 International Boxing Assn. world championships in New Delhi after two tests, one in India amid that tournament and a prior test in Turkey in May 2022, “concluded the boxer’s DNA was that of a male consisting of XY chromosomes,” according to correspondence the IBA sent in June 2023 – more than a year ago – to the International Olympic Committee.
The June 5, 2023, letter, spotlighting Algeria’s Imane Khelif, reads, “This situation epitomizes the importance of protecting safe sport, and the integrity of sport in which the Olympic Movement is jointly committed to.”
3 Wire Sports has seen the letter and the tests.
A few weeks back came the announcement of the Friendship Games, to be held in Russia in September. Total prize money across all sports: $100 million. Winners get $40,000. Second place, $25,000. Third: $17,000.
On Wednesday, World Athletics, the No. 1 sport in the Olympic landscape, made a precedent-setting move, announcing it would pay gold medalists at the Paris Games. Total prize money: $2.4 million. Winners across each of the four dozen track and field events will receive $50,000 each. Relay teams will split the $50k. Starting in Los Angeles in 2028, silver and bronze medalists will also be paid.
The timing may seem like World Athletics is following the Russians. To be clear, very clear: it is not.
“I have to accept the world has changed,” World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said Wednesday in an interview with Steve Scott at ITV.
The No. 1 complaint athletes have about the Olympic movement is that they can’t make money.
Meet the International Olympic Committee-disapproved Friendship Games, coming this September in Russia: 36 sports, 21 venues, 17 in Moscow, four in Ekaterinburg (including track and field Sept. 18-22).
Total prize money, across all sports: $100 million. Winners get $40,000. Second place, $25,000. Third, $17,000. No ‘Olympic village.’ Instead, you’ll be welcome in three- or four-star hotels.
Push, meet shove – brought to the world in some significant measure by Umar Kremlev, arguably one of the most provocative and interesting figures in world sport in 2024.
For nearly 10 years, since he was elected president of the International Olympic Committee, it has been a rare thing for Thomas Bach to be told no.
And for good reason. Despite his many vocal critics, almost all of whom have little to no idea how the IOC or the Olympic movement works in the real world, history will likely record Bach as the most consequential IOC president other than Juan Antonio Samaranch. Perhaps even more so.
Bach’s mantra is simple: change or be changed. He has sought to drag a traditional, conservative, European-oriented institution into the 21st century. He can claim considerable success, implementing major reforms, including the end of the corruption-plagued host-city elections.
Thus what happened Saturday, at an election for the presidency of the Olympic Council of Asia, amounts to the first signs of what may well be not just restlessness but pushback if not potent insurrection in the Olympic movement – one year ahead of Paris 2024 and two years before Bach is due to step down as president.
If Umar Kremlev, president of the International Boxing Association, was named, say, Bill Jones, and he was not Russian, then all of everything that has been at the root of the problem with the IBA and the International Olympic Committee would very likely have been solved long ago.
Instead, in a historic decision, the IOC membership, by a vote of 69-1, decided Thursday to banish the IBA into the Olympic wilderness – or, in its formal language, withdraw the federation’s recognition.
The vote was predictable. Under president Thomas Bach, the members rarely if ever deviate from the recommendations of the IOC executive board.
The IOC dates to 1894. The vote Thursday is believed to be the first time in those 128 years it has severed ties with a sport’s federation. The action means zero for boxing in Paris for 2024 and Los Angeles for 2028. Boxing will be on the program. Who will run it? That’s a question.
The bigger question: will the IOC ultimately be proven on the right side of history?
