July 13 - Qinhuangdao in China has been chosen to host the 2012 Women's World Boxing Championships, which will be the only qualifying event for London 2012, where women's boxing will make its debut on the Olympic programme.

The International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA) announced the decision today after a three-day Executive Committee meeting in Marrakech.

A total of 36 women boxers will compete in London 2012 with up to 34 places expected to be available at the Championships in the south-west Chinese city, which are scheduled to be held in January or February 2012.

China's Ningbo City staged the 2008 Women's World Championships where the host boxers won five of the 13 gold medals contested and they were joined on top of the podium by Ireland's Katie Taylor and India's Mary Kom and England's Nicola Adams won a silver.

Venues for a number of continental Olympic qualifying events to select the 250 men who will compete at London 2012 were also chosen.

These included Casablanca, who were chosen to host the African event after a delegation including Morocco's former Olympic 400 metres hurdles champion Nawal El Moutawakel, who is now a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) made a presentation.

Rio de Janeiro, which is due to host the 2016 Olympics, secured the rights to host the Americas qualifying tournament.

Brazil has already made an important step on the road to preparing its boxers for the Rio 2016 with the agreement to set up the "Young Boxer Brazil" project, in cooperation with AIBA and the Brazilian Olympic Committee.

As part of this project, a training centre will be set up to serve up to 100 young athletes from the age of 12 up and will be based at the Maria Lenk Aquatic Park.

The European Olympic qualification tournament was awarded to Istanbul, who beat Dublin and Yerevan, the Armenian capital.

Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, was chosen to stage the Asian tournament.

They are also due to be the venue for the 2010 AIBA Congress and the 2011 World Junior Championships.

The Oceania qualifying event was conditionally awarded to Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia, subject to negotiation of a suitable hosting fee.

This is to accommodate the fact that AIBA needs to dispatch officials from other continents to the event, due to insufficient numbers of qualified officials in the Oceania Boxing Confederation.

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April 2010: China bids for 2012 Women's World Boxing Championships