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Report on Womens Boxing Women’s Boxing appeared on the landscape of Amateur Boxing like a great avalanche in recent times. Over the past year, the number of participating countries has increased, so too has the number of women boxers. It is now known that thirty-four countries are practicing women’s boxing. Included in that number, are boxers from Sweden, Norway, Canada, United States of America, Finland, Germany, Greece, Denmark, England, Holland, Hungary, Cuba, Mexico, Ireland, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Cyprus, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. At the 1994 Congress in Beijing, AIBA took up female boxing on its boxing program. Rules were formulated for its participation, and the preamble of AIBA’s Statutes now specifies that amateur boxing may be practiced as a competitive sport by male and female athletes. However, only competitions between boxers of the same sex are authorized. In 1997, AIBA established a Sub-Committee for Women’s Boxing, when Mrs. Sandy Martinez-Pino of U.S.A. was appointed Chairwoman, and Mrs. Gilda Antzel of Greece was appointed Deputy Chairwoman. In May 1997, AIBA held its first women’s seminar in Tampere, Finland, and participation was indeed encouraging. Recommendations coming out of that seminar were presented by Mrs. Sandy Pino to AIBA at their Executive Committee Meeting in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in June 1997. The chairwoman said that women’s boxing was not about power or about knockouts, but more about skill, technique and defense. She recognized the presence of Mrs. Gilda Antzel, European Women’s Commissioner and thanked her for her work. She also affirmed that there was an enormous TV interest in women’s boxing, and that advertisers were very anxious to spend their TV dollars on the sport, hence AIBA would be well advised to support the women’s boxing program. In her report on women’s boxing to the XIVth AIBA Congress in Antayla, Turkey in November 1998, Mrs. Sandy Pino informed the assembly about the second International Olympic Committee’s Women in Sport Conference, which was held in Namibia, Africa in May of 1998. Mrs. Pino said that many questions we asked about women’s boxing, and it was her opinion that amateur boxing in general and women’s boxing in particular are well respected in the world today. The female boxers are preparing themselves for the first-ever Women’s World Championship which will be held in the year 2001 in the USA and they are eagerly looking forward to possibly having their sport on the program of the Olympic Games in the year 2004. As far training is concerned, there is no difference between men and women and many women see it as an opportunity to keep fit, while improving their ability to defend themselves. |
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