BERLIN - The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday granted provisional recognition to World Boxing in a major step towards the sport's inclusion in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

The boxing competition at the Paris 2024 Olympics was run by the IOC after it stripped the International Boxing Association (IBA) of recognition in 2023 over its failure to implement reforms on governance and finance.

The IOC has not included the sport on the LA 2028 programme yet, having urged national boxing federations to create a new global boxing body or risk missing out on the Olympics in three years' time.

World Boxing was launched in 2023 and has now 78 members across five continents.

"The (IOC) assessment concluded that World Boxing has continued to make progress regarding the identified areas of consideration in order to be recommended for IOC Provisional Recognition as the IF within the Olympic Movement governing the sport of boxing at world level," the IOC said in a statement.

The Olympic body said World Boxing had met several key criteria to merit provisional recognition.

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Among them were sufficient members across five continents, application of the sports integrity process implemented during the Paris Games, including with independent oversight and good governance structures, as well as assurances on revenues and signing up to the World Anti-Doping Code.

The recognition, even though it is still provisional, means the sport can now push towards its Olympic inclusion in 2028, having overcome the biggest hurdle in relation to the Olympics, which was the creation of a new global body for the sport.

"This is a very significant day for everyone connected with the sport of boxing in the Olympic movement," said World Boxing president Boris van der Vorst.

"Keeping its place at the Olympic Games is absolutely critical to the future of our sport at every level... and this decision by the IOC takes us one step closer to our objective of seeing boxing restored to the Olympic program.

"There is still a lot of work to do, and everyone is as committed as ever to continuing to work together and doing everything within our power to deliver a better future for our sport and ensuring that boxing remains at the heart of the Olympic movement." 

The IOC suspended the IBA, run by Russian businessman Umar Kremlev, in 2019 over governance, finance, refereeing and ethical issues and did not involve it in running the boxing events at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, before stripping it of recognition in 2023, an extremely rare move by the IOC.

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Apart from stripping its recognition, the IOC was also at loggerheads with the IBA for days during the Paris Olympics over the participation of two female boxers,Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting.

The IBA banned the fighters midway through the 2023 World Championships following a chromosome test, citing gender ineligibility, but the IOC allowed them both to compete and both won gold medals in their weight classes.