国际奥委会执委会昨晚在柏林正式确认，女子拳击成为2012年伦敦奥运会正式比赛项目，届时将有36名女子拳击选手参加伦敦奥运会比赛。拳跆中心主任常建平透露，中国女子拳击队至少能争取1到2枚。 另外，高尔夫球和7人制橄榄球或成为2016年奥运会比赛项目，只等今年10月的国际奥委会代表大会上通过。

　　Berlin has not been an Olympic city since 1936, but the Olympics were changed here Thursday, and more change could be on the way.

　　Meeting in the German capital, the International Olympic Committee’s executive board voted to include women’s boxing in the 2012 Summer Games in London. The 15-member board, presided over by the I.O.C. president, Jacques Rogge, also voted to recommend that rugby sevens and golf be included in the program for the 2016 Olympic Games. But it rejected the candidacies of five other sports: baseball, karate, roller sports, softball and squash.

　　The full I.O.C. membership will vote in October to decide whether rugby and golf will be incorporated.

　　“I hope they will be, but this requires a majority vote by the I.O.C. session,” Rogge said.

　　No more votes will be required on women’s boxing. Because boxing is already an Olympic sport, the board does not require the full membership’s approval to add women, and so one of the sturdiest gender barriers in the Olympics came crashing down.

　　Of the 26 sports contested last summer in Beijing, boxing was the only one that did not include women, in part a reflection of lingering cultural perceptions that boxing is too dangerous for women.

　　“I think it’s a very important and symbolic message from the I.O.C. to the world,” said Wu Ching-kuo, president of the International Boxing Association.

　　“I think people’s conception of women’s boxing were influenced by professional women’s boxing,” Wu said. “The amateur boxer and professional boxer, they are different. Different rules, different security concerns and measures. Amateurs have a head guard. Last year in China, we had the world championships, 250 boxers, more than 50 countries, and no single injury.”

　　To include three women’s weight classes in boxing, the number of men’s weight classes will be cut to 10 from 11.

　　“I am delighted that London 2012 will take its place in the Olympic tradition of advancing women in sport,” said Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London Organizing Committee.

　　Thirty-six women’s boxers will be part of the Olympics in London, but other women will have to continue to wait. Softball, an Olympic sport from 1996 to 2008, was removed from the 2012 program, along with baseball, in an I.O.C. vote in 2005.

　　Don Porter, an American who is president of the International Softball Federation, mounted a vigorous campaign to reintegrate softball in the Games, lobbying and traveling extensively. But on Thursday, Porter was left searching for answers as he listened to Rogge’s announcement at a news conference in a Berlin hotel.

　　The I.O.C.’s initial decision to remove softball came at a time when the American team was dominant and when there were concerns about the sport’s universality. It also came at a time of widespread anti-American sentiment globally. But the Americans lost the gold-medal game in Beijing last year to Japan, and Porter said he did not believe that a backlash against Americans was a factor this time, even though no Americans are on the executive board.

　　“I think the I.O.C. has a tough decision to make when they do look at all the sports, and they have to determine what they feel is best,” he said. “It’s their Games.

　　“Naturally, we’re disappointed and would have hoped they would see it differently, but that’s how sport is, and we’re going to continue our efforts, going to work and do as much as we possibly can to grow our sport.”

　　With the I.O.C. eager to promote women’s sports, Rogge was asked how he could justify the decision to reject softball. Rogge said he followed his usual custom by not voting Thursday, but suggested that the members who did support rugby and golf were “reassured” by the fact that although softball would have brought 120 women into the Games, rugby could potentially bring in 144 women on 12 teams and golf 60.

　　Golf and rugby have been in the Olympics before. Golf was part of the 1900 and 1904 Games. Rugby union, the classic 15-a-side-version of the game, was part of four Olympics, most recently in 1924.

　　But rugby officials are proposing its faster-paced, seven-a-side version for the Olympics, and it received the strongest support of any of the candidate sports, achieving the simple majority required on the second secret ballot. Bernard Lapasset, the Frenchman who is president of the International Rugby Board, said what made the difference was the geographical spread of nations that play rugby sevens, its festive culture and the fact it is played by men and women.

　　Top golfers have expressed support for the Olympics, even though their sport already features plenty of competitive pinnacles, including the four major championships.

　　But Peter Dawson, the chief executive of golf’s global governing body, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, said he believed the Olympic tournament, which would mimic the majors in its proposed 72-hole stroke play format, would not be a minor event.

　　“I think the opportunity to compete in the Olympic Games and win a gold medal with the name of your country on your back is a very different thing to playing for yourself in golf’s major championships,” said Dawson, who also said Olympic status would boost youth participation significantly.

　　First, however, they have to achieve Olympic status. “We’re not counting our chickens,” Dawson said.