Ireland's boxing body months away from losing Olympic membership
Ireland Olympic Paris The Chair Speaking Barnes/sportsfile Embassy Of Ireland Pic Sarah In Of Sam At Keane Federation
Ireland’s Paris 2024 heroes have earned their celebratory homecoming in Dublin on Monday, but the landscape isn’t all sweetness and light as the Irish Athletic Boxing Association’s (IABA) membership of the Olympic movement hangs by a thread.
Olympic Federation of Ireland (OFI) chair Sarah Keane has been told by the global Olympic committee to end the IABA’s membership of the movement in the coming months if they remain wedded to the International Boxing Association (IBA).
That’s a lot of moving parts and acronyms in two opening paragraphs, but it speaks simply for the complicated situation facing amateur boxing, a sport that is engulfed by a worldwide civil war between the IBA and the new World Boxing body.
As things stand, boxing remains off the Olympic programme for the Los Angeles Games in 2028 and 19 of Ireland's 42 Olympic medals to date have been won in the ring.
The IBA played no part in Olympic boxing in Tokyo or Paris having been banned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) due to governance issues and corruption allegations. World Boxing has been formed independently with some national federations having declared for it.
Members of Ireland’s boxing community voted on a special resolution at an EGM last year which, had it earned the numbers needed, would have changed their constitution and enabled the IABA to join the new world body.
In the end, the vote fell short of the 75% majority required but Keane expressed the hope that the IABA would “go out to its community once more” to see if it wanted to be a part of the new world body or remain with the IBA.
“[If] they vote to stay within the IBA, which means that federation won’t be part of boxing, we’ve been asked as an Olympic committee to cease their membership in the coming months,” she explained.
“Then it’s a case of, if you want boxing at the Olympic Games, and if you want to support high-performance this way, you have to create a new national federation.
“The IOC have asked. We will in the coming months have to say to the IABA ‘we can’t recognize you as a National Olympic Committee anymore because the international federation is not recognised by the IOC’.
“From our perspective we are very clear. We support World Boxing. We will have no choice but to comply with the IOC.”
The news comes on the back of - Kellie Harrington’s retention of her lightweight title aside - what was a hugely disappointing Games for the 10-strong Irish boxing team. Eight lost their opening bouts.
Keane has already had conversations with administrators from some of the sports that failed to hit their markers in France. No names were mentioned but boxing, equestrian and golf all failed to deliver medals predicted of them at this Olympiad.
It has still been Ireland’s most successful Games with a record haul of seven medals won and another highest-ever figure in the 20 top-10 finishes recorded. That’s no shock with money, facilities and support services all improving in recent years.
Keane believes another factor to be key too.
“The biggest change for me is that these athletes represent a change in Irish society, which is that we’re not just modest anymore. We’re actually not afraid to stand up and say we’re going after something. I’m prepared to say that.
“If I fail, I fail, but I’m not going to not go after it. That for me is a shift, that’s this generation, these people. You can put everything around them but if they do not believe in themselves, don’t go after it, don’t stand in front of you and say that’s what they want…”
Ireland sat 12th on the medal table at one point and finished it in 19th, thanks in large part to an historic four gold medals. The OFI, NGBs, coaches and athletes all shied away from medal targets pre-Games but up to nine had been predicted.
The OFI’s target wasn’t quite that high.
“Twelve to 14 medal opportunities for five-to-seven medals. We knew we had 12 to 14 but I was talking to the Dutch and they normally come in between 30 and 35 medals. They had 240 medal opportunities. They won’t come out with 35, they’ll come in around with 32.” The Games are over now but the games around them never stop.
Keane and the rest of the OFI officials spent the last two weeks and more flitting between venues and meetings, welcoming the Taoiseach and the Tanaiste and the Northern Ireland sports minister, and stressing again the need to kick on from this.
There will be a Paris Review – Sport Ireland have already done theirs – and work to be done on upping the government’s financial commitment again and implementing and updating the national sports strategies and policies. The boring, essential stuff. That never ends.
A grand total of €89m was spent on high-performance in the last Olympic cycle. That will have to increase again. The stated goal for Los Angeles in 2028 is eight-to-ten medals and there will be no ‘home’ bounce as we witnessed in London 2012 or this summer.
“We've probably got to look at ourselves as a nation and say where generally do we expect to be?” Keane asked.
“So, again I was talking to the Dutch and they were saying that they normally get top ten and someone had said to them, ‘but you're not very ambitious, you just want to be top ten’. And it's top ten in the world ! So there's an element of looking at that for us.”