Boxing has been Ireland’s most powerful driver of Olympic medals but the future on whether that will continue will only come into focus over the coming months.
The sport is not currently on the programme of listed events for LA 2028 but it does look more likely than not to be added next year.
For the past two Games in Tokyo and Paris, the IOC has stepped out of its own model by setting up an internal group to manage the sport at the Games. Every other International Federation manages its own events under the Olympic banner.
The International federation for boxing is still predominantly the International Boxing Association which has fallen out with the IOC over Governance, funding and issues of its close ties to Russia that have put it in the bad books, seemingly irredeemably.
To counter the threat of international ostracism from the Olympics, a new organisation, World Boxing, has been established driven by western countries including the US, and the UK, Canada, Italy, New Zealand, Australia and Brazil.
The mood music in Paris was that the IOC will appoint World Boxing to run the Olympic competition in LA and then it will be a case of being in or out.
The Irish Amateur Boxing Association has not yet applied for membership and the Olympic Federation of Ireland has been told that if it does not, and stays within the orbit of the IBA that it must revoke its membership and therefore self exclude from the LA Games.
That seems on paper then to be a simple decision but the issue is complicated by a credibility gap in the countries that have established World Boxing.
Of the 16 countries that competed in Gold Medal bouts at the Paris Games only Panama is a member of the new body which held its first Congress in the second half of 2023.
If the IBA retains all of the members that won Gold or Silver, including France, Algeria, Cuba, Turkey, mexico and Ireland, then its own World Championships will have a greater sense of being the best tournaments in the World.
The Olympics has always stood proud on the basis that its games are the pinnacle of the sports it hosts, with a few exceptions mainly in the professional spheres of football, golf and tennis.
The USA being the hosts and a founder member of World Boxing further complicates the process.
Ireland has always been strong at the Olympics and has the potential in young boxers like Kack marley, Jude Gallagher and Daina Moorhouse to get ever stronger.
Whether they get the chance though will be determined not by their talent but by the complex world of sporting geo politics.
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