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Boxing - A gymnast takes over - sports
The IOC excludes the World Boxing Association from the Summer Games 2020 in Tokyo - but not the boxers. It is also a consequence of years of corruption, mismanagement - and questionable personnel decisions.
Morinari Watanabe has been managing director of the sports business as a businessman in the holding company of the largest retailer in Asia. Since 2017, he is the president of the International Gymnastics Federation, the first Asian. The Japanese was an active gymnast, playing basketball, baseball and golf, and running Kendo, a modernized version of Japanese sword fighting as the Samurai had already fought. Morinari Watanabe has achieved a lot in his 60 years, he has never stopped caring about other things. Watanabe has not been able to prove that he could be an expert in boxing. Nevertheless, he is now the man to save the Olympic boxing.
On Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne decided on a way into the future for the Olympic boxing, after months of back and forth in the background. This path provides two points. First, boxers will attend the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Secondly: The world boxing federation Aiba will not participate, he was suspended by the IOC, with the necessary two-thirds majority. The IOC itself will take part, hosting the World Qualification tournaments and the competitions in Tokyo. The Japanese gymnast Watanabe will head this improvised umbrella organization of boxers.
The recent history of the World Boxing Association was one of the organized irregularities
For months, the IOC had threatened to exclude at least the boxing association, maybe even the boxers from the games in Tokyo. This potential threat should move Aiba to finally initiate the reforms that have been required for years. For the recent history of the World Boxing Association is a history of organized irregularities. A few months after the games in 2016, Aiba had suspended all 36 point and referees used after several athletes complained of judgments. This was most clearly expressed by Michael John Conlan. "The Aiba is a gang of swindlers," the Irishman had said. "These are corrupt bastards, they are all paid." In 2017, Aiba President Ching-Kuo Wu was chased out of office for alleged mismanagement. End of 2018, the association elected the Uzbek interim president Gafur Rachimov as the regular president, despite warning from the IOC. Rachimov is described by experts as one of the leading figures in drug trafficking in the former Soviet states, which he denies; In 2012, the US Department of the Treasury put him on a list of alleged mafia offenders, and his accounts were frozen. The Aiba saw him as a man of departure. Rachimov resigned in the spring, but trust was already destroyed.
How to proceed with the Aiba is open. "I hope they find a way out of the crisis," says Nenad Lalovic, head of the IOC Commission of Inquiry and world president of wrestlers. The Aiba is to be indebted with 29 million francs, by the exclusion of the Association of the games escapes the Association $ 17.5 million. "At the moment we're hanging in the air, we do not know what's going to happen, including the Olympic nomination of the athletes," says Jürgen Kyas, president of the German boxing federation Sports Information Service, This Thursday, Aiba will be gathering in Lausanne for its own executive meeting, with members of the IOC. "After that we know more," says Kyas. The only question is whether they will know enough for a clean new start.