The National Institute for Sport, Physical Education, and Recreation (INDER) announced that they would organize a boxing tournament for the women.
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Cuba is preparing to formally enable women to box after decades of prohibition. However, it has not been clarified whether this will be at the professional level, as was authorized for male boxers earlier this year. The National Institute for Sport, Physical Education, and Recreation (INDER) of the nation announced that they would organize a boxing tournament in the middle of December to select 12 athletes for the women’s team. The squad will then make its competition debut at the Central American and Caribbean Games in El Salvador, which is viewed as the first course of action toward the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024.
Since Summer Olympics in 1972 in Munich, Cuba has dominated international records by winning 41 gold medals in the history of the Games. After former President Fidel Castro outlawed professional boxing in 1962, the Cuban government approved the first official sanctioning of male professional boxers in more than 60 years in April 2022. Wrestling, weightlifting, karate, taekwondo, and judo were already open to female competitors. Women’s competition was first added to the Olympic schedule in London in 2012, having previously appeared with a single demonstration bout at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis.
The President of the Cuban Boxing Federation, Alberto Puig, stated that although they have lost a significant amount of time, they would make up for the same. The inclusion of boxing rapidly caused headlines in gyms in Havana, Cuba’s capital, where women had been training for years only to be told to leave the country if they tried to participate. Legnis Cala, a 57 kg left-handed boxer, stated, “After years of sacrifice and effort, the flame of boxing was beginning to flicker out for me.”
Ariel Sanz, the vice president of Cuba’s Institute of Sports (INDER), declared during a news conference that the government’s decision to legalize women’s boxing participation in the sport will bring them to the international medal table. The legal foundation for the move, according to Sainz, was provided by Cuba’s newly passed family code, a series of legislation aimed at eliminating discrimination against women and the LGBT population in Cuba’s “machista” culture. She added, “We have a {law} now that assures equality between men and women”.
