![]() ![]() Team captain Lianet Gomez, a lightweight, took up boxing just one week before the national team trials. “We’d been waiting for this for years,” García said, adding, “This is a conquest for women.” Flyweight Elianni de la Caridad Garcia, who had until then been working in a primary school kitchen, “jumped for joy” when she heard the news. “They didn’t want us to box – this was seen as a sport for men, and women were supposed to be at home,” she said.īut frustration turned to ecstasy when, in December, authorities announced that the ban on women’s boxing would be lifted and that they would hold trials for a national women’s team. Her sparring partner Melany de la Caridad Girado agreed. So, I never understood why we weren’t allowed ,” Cantillo said. “I’ve always thought that while men are stronger than us physically, us women are stronger mentally. In 2009, for example, the year the International Olympic Committee approved women’s boxing, the head coach of Cuba’s men’s team Pedro Roque told journalists that “Cuban women are there to show their beautiful faces, not to take punches.”Īt a recent training session, Cantillo said the ban was unjust. ![]() ![]() Yakelin Estornell, a super middleweight, hits a punching bag īut for many, the underlying reason for the foot-dragging was entrenched machismo culture and a paternalistic culture of overprotecting women. “There were worries about whether feminine boxing could damage women’s bodies, above all when they are pregnant,” he said, adding that the authorities carried out investigations lasting years to ensure athlete’s safety would be protected.įemale boxers must take periodical pregnancy tests now the ban is lifted and women must wear padding for protection. The president of Cuba’s Boxing Federation, Alberto Puig de la Barca, told Al Jazeera that the ban on women’s boxing was rooted in safety concerns. Over the last decade, Cuban authorities’ decision to prevent female boxers from competing became more incongruous not only because the Cuban state promotes itself a vanguard of women’s rights and equality, but because the National Sports Institute (INDER) had long allowed women to compete at the Olympics in a range of other contact sports such as wrestling, taekwondo and judo.Īlmost all the countries affiliated with the International Boxing Association (IBA) practise women’s boxing – but not Cuba. It was the same at Río de Janeiro in 2016 and Tokyo 2020, held in 2021 due to the COVID pandemic. When female boxers competed in the 2012 London Olympics for the first time, Cuban women could only watch as their male compatriots brought back golds. “Now that it’s approved, my dream has changed: I want to be a champion, win medals, and make history.” “Before my dream was that they approved women’s boxing,” featherweight Karen Cantillo told Al Jazeera at the gym. While it typically takes talented athletes many years of training to qualify for the Olympics, the women on the Cuban national team – some of whom only put on boxing gloves for the first time seven months ago – are trying to make it to the Paris Olympics next year. That changed in December when the Cuban Boxing Federation lifted its prohibition on women’s boxing and announced the creation of a national women’s team. In a nation where entrenched gender roles are hard to shake, women had been allowed to train but until recently, were banned from entering the ring to compete or even to spar. But so far, it has only been men that have brought back boxing glory. At the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021, the Caribbean island won four boxing golds. Next to a small puddle beside the ring, women wearing protective padding spar while others pummel a fraying punchbag or do sit-ups under a fading poster of boxing legend Teófilo Stevenson, who won three Olympic gold medals during the Cold War.Īn amateur boxing powerhouse, Cuba has won 41 Olympic boxing golds – second only to the USA. Havana, Cuba – As acrid sweat fills a dank boxing gym in east Havana, water drips through a crack in the ceiling. ![]()
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