The day before Kaye Scott’s gold medal fight at the world boxing championships in March, she should have been focusing on her upcoming bout against Russia’s Anastasiia Demurchian.
Instead, the 38-year-old Australian was fronting the International Boxing Associations conference in New Delhi to protest against a rule that would force her to retire at age 40.
Kaye Scott is fighting to overturn a rule that would force her to retire in 2025.Credit:Wolter Peeters
The IBA classifies elite boxers as men and women aged 19 to 40, meaning athletes have to retire in the year they turn 41, whether they want to or not.
“I feel like I’m at the peak of my career now, and that I have worked so hard in this lead-up,” Scott said. “I want to be able to embrace and use this time, and they’re going to say I can’t do it.
“That rule is completely outdated and an arbitrary number that doesn’t really mean anything.”
Scott, who competes in the light-middleweight division, is a Commonwealth Games bronze and silver medallist and now a world championship silver medallist.
She started casually boxing at her local PCYC in Hornsby 20 years ago, but when she wanted to get serious she hit a roadblock: boxing was illegal for women in NSW.
When the law was finally overturned in 2009, Scott was part of the state’s first legal exhibition fight against Ramona Stephenson.
But Scott, a NSW Institute of Sport scholarship holder and 2024 Olympic prospect, is just one athlete who has fallen victim to the IBA’s age restriction.
Six-time world champion Mary Kom, from India, will miss out on Olympic selection next year when she turns 41.
“I don’t want to retire at all,” Kom has said. “I want to compete for the next five years but, above 40, we can’t compete, that is the rule.”
Finland’s Mira Potkonen qualified for Tokyo 2020, which would be her final Olympics. But when the event was pushed back a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Potkonen was given special permission to compete at 41. She went on to win bronze in the lightweight division.
By limiting who can compete, the IBA is cutting out some of their best athletes, said Scott, and in 2025 when the next world championships rolls around, Australia won’t be able to send their best competitor.
“If someone like myself was able to come second at the world championships, and you’re saying I can’t defend my title at the next one, and I would still be No.1 in Australia, you’re stopping your number one person from being able to go,” Scott said.
“I think I should be able to retire on my own terms.”
Scott’s last year of competition will be in 2024, but even if she can’t get the rule overturned in time to allow her to compete at the Melbourne 2026 Commonwealth Games, she’s not going to give up the fight.
Having just been appointed to the IBA’s board in the Oceania division, Scott said she will work to make a change.
“Whether it happens to help me or not or whether it is someone else in the future, I just don’t think it’s a rule that should exist.”
Boxing Australia said the rule was out of their hands. “The age rule is an IBA rule. IBA is our governing body, and as such we are bound by that rule,” Boxing Australia said in a statement.
The IBA has been contacted for comment.
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