The drama over the future of the International Boxing Federation (AIBA) and its 3 November presidential election continues, now at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
At present, the only candidate on the ballot is Uzbek Gafir Rakhimov, the interim president, who has been named by the U.S. Treasury Department as an international criminal. But Serik Konakbayev (KAZ), a silver medalist for the USSR in the 1980 Olympic Games in the 63.5 kg class, was kept off the ballot because he did not have the required number of letters of nomination from other national federations by the Sunday, 23 September deadline.
Konakbayev, who is a current AIBA vice president and the head of the Asian Boxing Confederation, has appealed the decision and is asking the CAS to place his name on the ballot and require the AIBA to tell all of the voters of this change directly.
For AIBA’s part, it announced that it supports a fast-track decision on the matter.
The election has importance for AIBA beyond simply who will be the federation’s president. The IOC has suspended payments of AIBA’s share of Games television rights pending the reform of the federation’s operations. The IOC called out its “grave situation within the International Boxing Association and its current governance,” on 3 October. The penalty could be as stiff as removing boxing from the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo!
