AIBA, the international governing body for Olympic boxing, is aiming to introduce two additional women’s weight classes for the Olympic Games in 2020.
London 2012 saw women’s boxing contested for the first time at an Olympic Games, across three weight classes, 51kgs, 60kgs and 75kgs.
Speaking to Boxing News at the Women’s World championships in Astana, president of AIBA, Dr. Ching-Kuo Wu said, “We are the last [Olympic] sport to include women. Now women are in, that has been for two Games but in future we need to give a long term projection, what should be the final format.”
“If you consider gender equality for sport I think women deserve to have more categories, more boxers. However this has to go through a process. So my aim, my target is to increase it to five categories,” he continued. “At the moment you know from 60kgs to 75kgs, there’s a 15 kilo difference, so for the boxers within this range it’s very difficult to make an adjustment of their weight. You cannot drop 10kgs, you cannot increase 10kgs, so that is the problem. So we need to create some category inbetween.
“I think we all understand the problem. How to create two more categories, to make the current three categories more balanced, that is for our Technical Rules commission, they are working on it. We are studying what is best for women’s boxers to make the adjustment. If we create two [divisions] inbetween 60kgs and 75kgs, how about 51kgs to 60kgs? That’s what we need to consider, how to find a good balance.
“This Olympics is fixed [for weight classes] anyway but we draw the IOC’s attention [to it]. This is Agenda 2020, gender equality, like we try to bring the professionals into the Games, it’s the same, that is the recommendation from Agenda 2020.”
