Quebec nurse had to clean up after husband's death in Montreal hospital
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
Legnis Cala Masso carefully removes her necklace and smiles as her coach slides her bright red boxing gloves over her French tip nails.
The 31-year-old swings her wiry body into the ring and pounds her fellow boxer -- also a young woman -- with a series of punches, just as she's done countless times before.
Today is a day she's been waiting for since she started to box seven years ago.
Cuban officials announced Monday that women boxers would be able to compete officially after decades of restrictions, though they didn't yet confirm if that would be taken to a professional level like it was with Cuban male boxers earlier this year.
Still, it sparked excitement in women like Cala Masso who have spent years fighting to be recognized.
"Saying that boxing is not for Cuban women -- that's always been the problem," she said, leaning on the side of a blue boxing ring in downtown Havana. "Where we are now, we never thought we would get here."
Cuba is known worldwide for boxing, home to many legendary male boxers -- among them Felix Savon, Teofilo Stevenson and Julio Cesar La Cruz -- and owner of a dozens of Olympic medals in the sport.
But the island has also sparked controversy by not allowing women to compete, despite permitting them to do so in other contact sports like taekwondo and wrestling.
Perhaps most notably in 2009, the former head coach of Cuba's men's team Pedro Roque told a group of journalists that "Cuban women are there to show their beautiful faces, not to take punches."
It was a sentiment Cala Masso and other women who have embraced the sport have rejected as they've sought to change the rules.
Cala Masso began boxing in Havana with just one other women, spending long hours training despite being turned away by many coaches and boxing rings. With time, interest in boxing among women has only grown.
On Monday morning, officials with Cuba's National Institute for Sports, INDER, announced in a press conference that they would hold a competition of 42 women boxers in mid-December to choose 12 athletes for a women's team.
The team, they said, will compete in the Central American and Caribbean Games in El Salvador, their first international debut. The competition will be a first step toward the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Women were first allowed to box in the Olympics in 2012.
Cala Masso, who now trains with five other women, hopes the decision means their community will only grow.
The announcement comes shortly after Cuban boxers made a comeback in May in Mexico, with male boxers competing professionally -- and getting paid -- for the first time since the communist government prohibited professional sports 60 years ago. It was a big change in a country where athletes, namely boxers and baseball players, regularly leave for paycheques elsewhere.
Down the line, once the team is built, those women could also potentially compete in a professional capacity, INDER officials said.
Meanwhile, they said Cuban women boxers will be able to train in state sports centres starting in January.
Emilia Rebecca Hernandez, of INDER, said that the changes would make it so "Cuban women athletes can move up to the place where they belong -- right next to men."
Yet Hernandez, who spoke only briefly, was the only woman on a panel of male officials who said their delay in allowing women to practice the sport was because they had to investigate "the risks that women could run."
Women will wear additional padding, they said.
Yet for 22-year-old Giselle Bello Garcia, who boxed alongside Cala Masso after having only started boxing one year earlier for exercise, said the news offers them a chance to show what they're made of.
"I have a new hope for life, because my life has changed. From now on, I'm going to focus solely on boxing," she said. "I want my whole life, up until my death, to be connected to boxing."
"I have to be the best," she added.
------
Havana correspondent Andrea Rodriguez contributed to this report
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
Brad Marchand scored twice, including the winner in the third period, and added an assist as the Boston Bruins downed the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 to take a 2-1 lead in their first-round playoff series Wednesday
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was among the 1,700 delegates attending the two-day First Nations Major Projects Coalition (FNMPC) conference that concluded Tuesday in Toronto.
The daughter of a New Brunswick man recently exonerated from murder, is remembering her father as somebody who, despite a wrongful conviction, never became bitter or angry.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.