Boxing at the 2012 Summer Olympics Boxing at the 2012 Summer Olympics The boxing tournaments at the 2012 Olympic Games in London were held from 28 July to 12 August at the ExCeL Exhibition Centre. A total of 286 competitors took part in 13 events. For the first time at an Olympic Games, women competed in three boxing events. The first Olympic gold medal in women's boxing was awarded to Nicola Adams from Great Britain, who won the flyweight tournament on 9 August 2012. Men competed in the following ten events: Women's boxing was included in the Olympic programme for the first time, with female boxers
Boxing in the 1950s many television networks began to feature fights live during the weekends, and the "Gillette Friday Night Fights" proved to be one of the most popular boxing television series in American history. The dawn of the jet airplane era in 1958 also helped boxing expand worldwide: with airplanes flying faster and more frequently between cities far away from each other, more and more world title fights began to be fought outside the United States. Vic Toweel became South Africa's first world boxing champion, Jimmy Carruthers did the same for Australia, Pascual Pérez was the first from Argentina, Yoshio Shirai (who was