For the primary time since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, Cuba will permit feminine boxers to take part within the candy science after a long time of restrictions.
Cuban officers with the Nationwide Institute for Sports activities (INDER) introduced throughout a press convention Monday that ladies would be capable to participate in official competitions.
Officers additionally revealed plans to carry a contest of 42 girls boxers in mid-December to decide on 12 athletes for a girls’s staff that may then make its worldwide debut on the Central American and Caribbean Video games in El Salvador.
“Ladies’s boxing in Cuba… goes to deliver us to the worldwide medal desk,” stated Ariel Saínz, vp of INDER, in the course of the press convention.
Regardless of being residence to legendary male boxers akin to Félix Savón, Teófilo Stevenson and Julio César La Cruz, Cuba was one among only a handful of nations affiliated with the Worldwide Boxing Affiliation (IBA) that didn’t apply girls’s boxing. The controversial restriction was significantly stunning given that ladies might compete in different fight sports activities akin to taekwondo and wrestling.
Saínz famous that the equality hole between female and male rivals is slowly shrinking after Cuba launched a set of rules focusing on discrimination towards girls and LGBTQ+ individuals in Cuba. This, in flip, helped pave the best way for girls to compete in boxing.
“We now have a [law] now that assures equality between women and men,” Sainz stated.
