Cuba lifts ban on female boxing

A BAN on female boxing in Cuba, one of the powerhouses in Olympic boxing, which has been in place for more than 60 years, has ended.

In an announcement in Havana last month, Cuba’s Institute of Sports announced that female boxing would no longer be banned in Cuba.

This was backed up shortly afterwards by Alberto Puig de la Barca, the president of the Cuban Boxing Federation, who said that Cuba had done exhaustive medical research to find out if it is safe for women to compete in boxing and, based on those studies, it had been concluded that they should be allowed to do so.

The ban on female boxing was instituted after the Cuban revolution in 1959, and, despite efforts to change this, nothing happened until recently.

In the meantime, however, Cuban men became the ones to beat in amateur boxing, and consistently dominated the World Boxing Championships and Olympic boxing. Their two best-known Olympic boxers are super heavyweights Teofilo Stevenson and Felix Savon.

In confirming the change, the Boxing Federation president pointed to the fact that there are measures in place in women’s boxing that will protect them against injuries, and that statistics showed that there were no cases of female boxers suffering any trauma over the years. Female boxing was first introduced to the Olympics in London in 2012, and the number of countries getting involved has been increasing since.

Although there was an official ban, female boxing took place quietly in Cuba over the years, in various communities. So, with the lifting of the ban, there were boxers available for selection to a squad to undergo specialised training over the next several months.

From this squad, a team will be selected to participate in the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games, which take place in San Salvador in June this year.

Their goal after that will be the Pan American Games and the Olympics.