Women's boxing to debut at 2012 Olympics

As of Thursday, women's boxing has officially been added to the list of sports for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, according to ESPN.com. With this addition, all 26 sports featured in the games will now have male and female competitors.

There will be 36 female boxers competing; 12 fighters in each of the three different weight divisions of flyweight, lightweight and middleweight. In order to make room for the female boxers, one of the 11 men's weight classes will be dropped. The International Olympic Committee enforces a limit of 286 boxers in the Olympics, so the men will still compete for 10 gold medals, but with only 250 boxers. The women, obviously, will compete for three gold medals.

According to the article, female boxing was rejected as an Olympic sport four years ago, as it failed to "reach standards of medical safety and universality." The president of the IOC has now stated, however, that they have checked everything "from a medical point of view" and that there is no issue.

Source: ESPN