News

After his election as IWF President in June 2022, Mohammed Jalood and his colleagues from a renovated Executive Board undertook immediate, structural, and robust reforms to address two of the main problems undermining our International Federation’s reputation: good governance and anti-doping policy. The approval of a new Constitution and By-Laws was the main mechanism to cover the first topic, establishing clear rules and procedures to ensure gender equity, athlete representation, term limits, and a code of conduct for officials serving in the IWF. Moreover, considerable efforts were made in the fields of inclusivity – namely with the creation of the first-ever IWF Refugee Team, in 2023, or the adoption of a gender identity policy – and sustainability (the IWF has since developed a partnership with the United Nations in this field). On the anti-doping front, the IWF President was a strong promoter of a solid collaboration between our International Federation and the ITA (International Testing Agency), thus guaranteeing that the entirety of anti-doping operations is run in an independent and transparent way. Other major initiatives under Jalood’s presidency include the reinforcement of the IWF headquarters in Lausanne, the establishment of a 2024-2032 IWF Strategic Plan, the integration of safeguarding policies, and the adoption of a Human Rights and Non-Discrimination Policy. These reforms played an essential role in the IOC’s positive decision to keep Weightlifting in the Olympic programme for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. This ‘culture change’ was also largely valued by the IWF National Federations in May 2025, when Mohammed Jalood was re-elected as the IWF President for the period 2025-2029.