2024 Boxing Olympics: What You Need To Know

It may have been called differently and didn’t look exactly the way it does today, but boxing has a much longer history than a lot of modern sports. The origins of boxing are unknown, as are the first rules, though the first recorded evidence of its existence comes from Egypt and Sumer. Later it spread to Greece, Mesopotamia, and Rome.

In Greece, boxing was a well developed sport known under the name “pygmachia” (literal translation: “fist fighting”) and enjoyed great popularity. It first appeared at the 23rd Olympic Games in 688 BCE, where athletes fought each other with leather thongs on their hands and forearms for protection. 

After the fall of the Roman Empire, boxing disappeared from records in the Western world, only to resurface in 17th century England. Records of amateur fights appeared in 1880 when boxing was already a well-established sport with established rules. 

It wasn’t, however, until 1904 that boxing became an official part of the Olympic Games programme at the Games of the III Olympiad in St. Louis, USA. Since then, it has been a permanent part of the Games, except for the 1912 Olympics – the year when the Games were conducted in Sweden that had the sport banned at the time.

Currently, the future of boxing in the Olympic Games is still unclear. It is quite possible that the 2024 boxing Olympics might become the last event of its kind. Currently, the International Olympic Committee and the International Boxing Association, the sport’s governing body, are amidst a huge crisis. In June 2022, the IOC banned the Association from organizing the tournament, after they expressed discontent with “irregularity issues” that occur within the Association in fields such as governance, finance, refereeing, and others.

2024 Boxing Olympics: Weight Categories, Competition Format, Schedules 

The boxing events in Paris 2024 are scheduled between 27 July and 10 August. The first day of the programme will see four events in the round of 32: men’s 63.5 kg, men’s 80 kg, women’s 54 kg, and women’s 60 kg. Preliminary matches will take place at the Arena Paris Nord convention centre, while the semifinals and finals will be held at the legendary Roland Garros Stadium that is home of the French Open tournament in tennis.

It has only been 12 years since women’s boxing was added to the official Olympic programme. In the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, women’s boxing was presented in three weight categories: flyweight, lightweight, and middleweight. Golden medalists in each category were Nicola Adams (Great Britain), Katie Taylor (Ireland), and Claressa Shields (USA) correspondingly.  

The gender parity between men’s and women’s boxing at the Games continues to develop. The 2024 boxing Olympics will see men presented in seven weight categories, while women will be fighting for the medals in six weight categories. While the sport has been present at the Olympics with the same number of categories for the past three editions, there will be a total of 23 more women this year than at the Tokyo Olympics.

However, many professionals express their concern that this equality comes at the expense of cutting down the number of weight categories for men. Since the 1988 Olympics, this number has gone down from 12 to 7 categories, correspondingly resulting in the reduced number of male athletes participating in the tournament.

As of now, the following weight categories will be competing at the 2024 boxing Olympics:

Men’s Weight Categories

• 51 kg
• 57 kg
• 63.5kg
• 71 kg
• 80 kg
• 92 kg
• +92 kg

Women’s Weight Categories

• 50 kg
• 54 kg
• 57 kg
• 60 kg
• 66 kg
• 75 kg

2024 Boxing Olympics Qualifiers

Following the fallout between the International Olympic Committee and International Boxing Association, the IBA was barred from holding the qualifying events for the 2024 Paris Olympics. As a result, the IOC adopted a new system. According to this system, the athletes would secure quota spots through participating in continental multisport events. The schedule for the qualifiers span over a year, with the first one held in June 2023 during the European Games and the final one held in June 2024 during the World Qualification Tournament 2. 

The overall schedule and geography of the qualifying events was as follows:

As a result of the qualifying tournaments, a total of 248 eligible boxers were admitted to participate in the 2024 boxing Olympics, with the quota significantly lower than it was in Tokyo 2020 that had 289 boxers. 

This year’s quota is equally distributed between male and female athletes. In total, 68 National Olympic Committees were qualified to send their athletes to the 2024 Summer Olympics. Each NOC could only send one boxer per weight category. 

After the qualifying rounds were completed, two athletes were disqualified from participation due to various violations: Baatarsükhiin Chinzorig (Mongolia; men 63.5 kg weight category) and Parveen Hooda (India; women 57 kg weight category). They will be replaced by Bunjong Sinsiri (Thailand) and Sitora Turdibekova (Uzbekistan) correspondingly. 

The complete list of boxers to participate in the 2024 boxing Olympics is below.

Men’s boxing

Women’s boxing