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Boxing ban for breast implants
won’t have the same problem.”
The ABAE said that it had hoped to develop
a protective breast plate to allow women
like Blewden to box competitively, but
research funding had been withdrawn.
Women’s boxing is not currently an
Olympic sport, but Tessa Jowell, the
Olympics Minister wants to change the
rules to open all events to both sexes for
London 2012.
Ms Jowell said: “I think it’s wrong that
women can’t compete in as many events
as men. Women’s sport has come on
leaps and bounds so it’s high time there
was equal opportunity at the Olympics.”
It’s official – cheerleading is a contact sport
cited stunts in which cheerleaders are
tossed in the air.
Brittany Noffke, a cheerleader at Holmen
High School in western Wisconsin, fell
backward off the shoulders of another
cheerleader and suffered a serious head
injury in 2004. She sued her 16-year-old
male teammate who was supposed to be
her spotter, the school district and the
district’s insurer.
The Supreme Court rejected the argument
that “contact sports” should mean only
aggressive sports such as football and
hockey. Ziegler wrote they should include
any sport that that includes “physical
contact between persons.”
This decision means cheerleaders can
be sued only for recklessness. The court
said Noffke’s teammate only made a
mistake or showed a lack of skill. As for
the school district, Ziegler said it cannot
be sued for the coach’s behavior under
a Wisconsin law that shields government
agencies from lawsuits for the actions of
employees.
Because of the increasingly difficult
stunts, injuries among high school
cheerleaders are a problem. Researchers
at the University of North Carolina have
found that two-thirds of the roughly 100
cases of “catastrophic” sports injuries
among high school girls since 1982 have
involved cheerleading.
The Supreme Court in the U.S. state
of Wisconsin ruled that high school
cheerleading is a contact sport at the
end of January. This decision means that
cheerleading participants cannot be sued
for accidentally causing injuries.
The decision means that a former high
school cheerleader cannot sue her
teammate who failed to stop her fall while
participating in a stunt. The court also
ruled that the injured cheerleader is not
able to sue the school district.
According to the National Cheer Safety
Foundation, this is the first decision of its
kind in the U.S.
The primary question in the case was
whether cheerleaders qualify for immunity
under a Wisconsin law that prevents
participants in contact sports from suing
each other for unintentional injuries.
The difficulty was that the law does not
list the sports which are regarded as
contact sports. The District 4 Court of
Appeals ruled in 2008 that cheerleading
does not qualify because there is no
contact between opposing teams.
This decision was overruled unanimously
by the Supreme Court. In the ruling,
Justice Annette Ziegler said cheerleading
involves “a significant amount of physical
contact between the cheerleaders.” She
A former model aspiring to be Britain’s
first woman boxer at the Olympics has
been banned from the ring due to her
breast implants.
Sarah Blewden, 25, took up boxing two
years ago to keep fit and soon discovered
she had a natural talent.
But the Amateur Boxing Association of
England (ABAE) deflated her hopes of
Olympic glory when it turned down her
application on the grounds that the breast
augmentation she underwent in 2003 put
her at greater health risk.
“International rules forbid anyone with
breast implants continuing to box because
of risk of damage to the breast tissue,”
said Tony Attwood, chairman of the ABAE.
“The natural breast tissue is pushed
forward in front of the implant and it is
this that is more at risk.”
Repeated punches to the breast could
also lead to distortion known as capsular
contracture, he said.
Blewden from Poole, Dorset, who runs
a hair salon, described the decision as
“ridiculous” and said she would happily
pay for surgery to repair any damage to
her 32C breasts.
“My surgeon said they make me no more
vulnerable than any other woman. They
are not enormous ones -- they are in
proportion. They are gel implants and not
liquid so they won’t burst.”
She added: “Women haven’t been allowed
to box for that long and this is an obstacle
I want to get over so other women like me