Following Tuesday's decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the International Boxing Association (IBA) has reacted with disappointment. The body disagrees with the arguments used by CAS to dismiss its appeal against the IOC, including the fact that: "there is no coherent roadmap for the IBA to follow or direct channel of communication."

According to its official website, the IBA regrets that: "its initiatives have been overlooked by both the IOC and CAS". The association states: "We do not agree with the simplified language of the CAS press release." It goes on to say that "the IOC never provided the IBA with a coherent roadmap or established a direct channel of communication, even after the IBA proposed a 24/7 liaison person for these related matters."

In its final award, the CAS panel found that the IBA had failed to comply with the IOC's conditions for recognition at the time of the appealed decision, which the IBA rejected on Wednesday. The IBA listed some of the reforms that had been made that were not reflected in last Tuesday's CAS decision.

Position of the International Boxing Association:

"The IBA Congress has amended its constitution and elected a new Board of Directors through a rigorous selection process, reflecting most of the recommendations of the Ulrich Haas Governance Reform Group, and established the Boxing Independent Integrity Unit (BIIU), which is fully operational and composed of recognised legal experts."

The IBA also notes that there has been "a clean-up of competition officials and processes have been put in place for the evaluation of all on-field personnel, including International Technical Officials, referees and judges". In this regard, the IBA argues that: "Prof. Richard McLaren used state-of-the-art procedures to assess officials and identify high-risk officials who were immediately excluded by the IBA."

"The IBA has paid off millions of dollars of debt. It has become financially sustainable and completely independent of Olympic revenues with its income from events and sponsors. It has been reshuffled from top to bottom and throughout the organisation."

For all these reasons, the IBA insists: "Ignoring these and other improvements suggests a biased view." In its own words, the IBA points out that it believes "CAS is far from independent of the IOC". According to the IBA, it is curious that: "The IOC's victory in this dispute was announced before the ruling was issued". 

It concludes: "The IOC President has shown disrespect for the Olympic Charter and has discredited himself and the IOC as an organisation by his statement of reasons for withdrawing recognition from the IBA." 

For all these reasons, the IBA concludes that it "will refrain from making any further comments until the CAS decision has been thoroughly analysed by its legal experts". Once this has been done, the organisation will decide whether to appeal to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court.

For its part, the IOC said in an official statement: "We welcome the decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). In its decision, the highest Olympic body refers to the CAS statement that "the IOC has not increased its financial transparency and sustainability, including the diversification of its income" and finally, as reported by Olympics.com, "the IOC has not ensured the full and effective implementation of all the measures proposed by the 'Governance Reform Group' set up by the IOC."

The IOC continued on Wednesday: "Because of the universality and high social inclusiveness of boxing, the IOC wishes to keep it in the Olympic programme". However, "as with all other Olympic sports, in order to keep boxing in the Olympic programme, the IOC needs a recognised and reliable international federation as a partner.

It is now in the hands of the National Boxing Federations and their National Olympic Committees (NOCs) to create such a federation that will respect the IOC's conditions for recognition". The IOC has set a deadline: "At present, boxing is not included in the Olympic programme of LA28. To remedy this situation, the IOC must have a partner International Boxing Federation by the beginning of 2025."