Gennady Golovkin took part in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, where he won Kazakhstan a silver medal in the middleweight division having won the gold medal at the 2003 World Amateur Boxing Championships a year earlier. 

Now the president of the Kazakhstan Olympic Committee, he wished his athletes the best, but also emphasised his love of the sport which has made him great and allowed him to become both a champion and a symbol for his countrymen.

Recently, the man once considered one of the greatest middleweights in history, confessed to being "very sad" to the Associated Press. 

He admitted that he owes much of his career to what he achieved at the Olympics and what he learned from them, a career that ended with 42 victories in 45 fights, 37 of them by knockout.

"The question of boxing not being safe for the Los Angeles Olympics is not only upsetting, but I simply cannot believe that this could happen" he told the AP. "I think we have to make a maximum effort, all of us, to avoid it, to find a way out of this depressing situation," he told the AP."

 In April 2023, the IOC withdrew its recognition of the IBA as the governing body of world boxing. Since then, the IBA has been trying to defend itself in the courts against what it sees as an injustice. 

Meanwhile, the IOC maintains that it does not wish to restore recognition to the IBA, but still has no recognised governing body. The Swiss courts have accepted the IBA's appeal, and the IBA is continuing on its way.

Time is running out to find a solution as the IOC recently said that if there is no recognised body by the end of 2024, boxing will be dropped from the Olympic programme in Los Angeles in 2028. 

By the beginning of 2025, the International Olympic Committee wants boxing to be affiliated with a recognised governing body, but not the troubled International Boxing Association (IBA).

The alternative to the IBA is World Boxing, which was created after the IOC withdrew recognition from the IBA. World Boxing is still trying to get the national federations on board. For the time being, boxing is divided and the IOC is not moving. 

"If we fail to keep boxing in the Olympics, it will be a tragedy," said Golovkin. For Triple GGG, it would be something he cannot understand as his country, Kazakhstan, has won more medals in boxing than in any other sport. Boxing in his country is a reference, and he is the President of the National Committee, which makes him even more aware of the threat to boxing.

The Olympic boxing tournament began last Saturday. It could be the last if the situation is not resolved. It has always been considered one of the quintessential Olympic sports and has been part of the programme since the beginning, except for in 1904. 

Olympic boxing has always been a springboard for young athletes. The leap to professionalism was usually made by those who performed well at the Games. Nowadays, however, there is no longer such a big difference between amateurs and professionals. From Rio 2016, amateurs will be allowed to compete.

World Boxing currently has 37 national federations and the vast majority of them continue to support the IOC. Boxing was organised by the IOC itself in Tokyo and Paris, but it has already announced that it will not do so in Los Angeles in 2028. Neither Golovkin nor the members of the federations can imagine boxing disappearing from the Olympic programme. 

While supporting the federations that remain in its structure, the IBA continues its race against time to regain what it considers to be its own. World boxing's goal is to have the IOC recognise it as a world governing body. Contacts have been made, but there is still no official or public progress. 

The boxers themselves cannot imagine boxing being removed from the Olympic structure, but the truth is that Paris could be boxing's last dance on the IOC programme.