HAVANA
\nWith a strong right jab to the face of her opponent, Elianni Garcia Polledo on Saturday won the first official women\u2019s boxing match in sports-crazed Cuba.
\n\u201cIt is a historic result for Cuban boxing,\u201d said one of the judges over the loudspeaker when announcing the \u201cunanimous\u201d decision for Garcia, from Havana province, over Reynabell Grant, from Guantanamo. Both are 27.
\nDressed in red and shorter, Garcia tirelessly landed powerful blows with both hands that hit her opponent\u2019s face, shoulders and abdomen several times.
\nThat is, until the decisive blow, in the third round, left Grant down for the count and ultimately decided the fight.
\nIt was the beginning of the first official women\u2019s boxing program, something that many women and authorities of this sport expected in Cuba, an island that boasts 80 world boxing titles and 41 Olympic gold medals in boxing, including the legendary Teofilo Stevenson.
\nFinally, Cuban sports authorities gave a green light for women on December 5.
\n\u201cThis is a moment that we have been preparing for, for several years,\u201d Alberto Puig de la Barca, president of the Cuban Boxing Federation, told AFP.
\nIn the end, there will be 12 females \u2013 two for each division, which will be the pre-selection of the team for the Central American games in San Salvador, in August 2023 and other international events.
\n\u201cShe (Garc\u00eda) just kept working on the offensive, looking to shorten the distance,\u201d Raul Fernandez, 55, one of her trainers, told AFP at the end of the fight.
\nGarcia, who says she came to boxing from athletics, now looks optimistically at her future in boxing. \u201cI have a bittersweet feeling, because I cannot represent Cuba,\u201d Namibia Flores told AFP. At 46, she is six years older than the age maximum in this sport.
\nBut she can be there outside the ring: \u201cRight now, I am the only trainer and I was one of the first girls who is training since 2006,\u201d she says. At 70 years old and already retired, Nardo Mestre could not miss this moment.
\nHe was the trainer of Flores and many other girls for nearly 30 years, when, he remembers, Alcides Sagarra, the father of the Cuban Boxing School, arrived one afternoon suggesting they need to train women.
\nSo \u201cit was never approved. Now it was authorized and I am already retired, but proud because five of the girls that I trained are here today,\u201d he told media.
\nCuba has had female representation in all sports, including weightlifting and wrestling, since 2006, but the last bastion of \u201csports machismo\u201d long was insurmountable: letting women box.
\nWomen\u2019s boxing is now practiced in 187 of the 202 member countries of the International Boxing Association (IBA).
\nWomen made their debut at the London 2012 Olympic Games, with three divisions.
\nIt has yet to be determined if Cuba could be represented by its women in the next Boxing World Cup in Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, next May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HAVANA With a strong right jab to the face of her opponent, Elianni Garcia Polledo on Saturday won the first official women\u2019s boxing match in sports-crazed Cuba. \u201cIt is a historic result for Cuban boxing,\u201d said one of the judges over the loudspeaker when announcing the \u201cunanimous\u201d decision for Garcia, from Havana province, over Reynabell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-302022","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n