Women's boxing becomes Olympic sport

"The decision was a recognition that women's boxing has made substantial progress in universality and technical quality of the athletes since the IOC last considered the discipline in 2005," the press release on the website said.

Women boxers will compete in three weight classes, with 12 competitors each in flyweight, lightweight and middleweight.

One of the 11 man's classes will be dropped as there is a limit of 286 boxers in the Olympics, so the committee left only 10 men's and three women's events, representing an additional two boxing events on the program.

The committee also approved several other changes for the London Games.

The IOC agreed to the request made by the International Canoe Federation (ICF) to reduce all men's 500-meter canoe events to 200 meters in order to make it "a more spectacular race." The committee also replaced the men's C2 500m with women's K1 200m.

The Olympic Committee agreed to implement a new combined run-shoot format in Modern Pentathlon and remove placement, non-medal consolation matches in the handball tournament.

Moreover, the IOC is going to consider the inclusion of a mixed doubles tennis event pending guarantees from the International Tennis Federation that the top players in the singles rankings would be able to participate.

Wrestling, swimming and cycling were all given the option to introduce new events if they drop existing ones.

The decision on the changes was made and announced on Thursday in Berlin, Kazinform cites RIA Novosti. See www.en.rian.ru for full version.