For eight years, Cuban boxer Namibia Flores has leaned in with a clenched jaw and raised guard to throw punches against all-male training partners.
Flores follows the same preparation as her male opponents. She lifts the same truck tires and waits for the same opportunity to catch a break and get the chance to fight for her country.
However, the 39-year-old woman with a body sculpted by grueling training is in a unique race against time to achieve an athletic dream in a country where female boxing is not recognized.
Photo: AFP
“I don’t see what is so dangerous for women,” Flores says, hair pulled back tight as she dons a foam helmet and steps into the ring to take on a male opponent.
Battling against odds and time, Flores punches on, hoping to fight for her nation, be an ambassador for the sport and an example for the women she hopes fight next.
Boxing is wildly popular in Cuba and the country has won 67 Olympic medals in the sport, more than any other nation apart from the much larger US.
Other sports on the communist island are much more open to females, but boxing remains a redoubt of machismo and women are barred from competing.
Flores has likely already missed her chance to compete in the Olympics, which added women’s boxing in 2012 with an age limit of 40.
While the subject of women’s boxing is not frequently discussed publicly by sport authorities, sources close to the country’s boxing federation said the opening of boxing for women was under negotiation, giving Flores reason for hope.
Inside a decrepit gym west of Havana, Flores is drenched in sweat in the ring during a sweltering Caribbean summer. She throws a straight left trying to get through the defense of her partner and then follows that with a powerful right, exhaling loudly.
“Namibia has good physical strength, good technique, she hits hard,” says her sparring partner of eight years, Jonathan.
“There are women like Namibia who have such adrenaline, they need to release that energy,” says Flores’ coach Isidro Barzaga, off to the side.
By watching his protegee, Barzaga hopes other women will be inspired to box.
However, women’s boxing still faces an uphill battle. In 2009, as the sport was beginning to take off around the world, Pedro Roque, then a technical director of Cuban boxing, said that to protect feminine “beauty,” it is necessary to keep women from taking blows to the face.
“I don’t see how boxing deprives women of their femininity, women are feminine at any time in any sport,” Jonathan said.
For Flores, boxing is an indispensable part of her life.
“With boxing, I can remove the negative energy that builds up home, at work, day after day,” Flores says.
Crossing gloves with men daily gives her a thrill unlike any other.
“I dominate some, but others surpass me,” she says.
In March, Flores traveled to the US to attend a screening of a documentary about her called Boxeadora.
While in the US, she traveled to numerous cities and received offers to join US clubs.
However, Flores says she will not abandon her home nation.
“Why fight for the United States... if where I learned boxing is here?” she said before joining her coach in another intense training session.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier