The 5ft-tall history researcher practising uppercuts at her local boxing gym is not, on the face of it, the typical contender in a sport traditionally associated with the working man.

Until recently it would have been a surprise to find Sarah Ramsey, a 22-year-old preparing to study for a masters in philosophy at Oxford University, even watching a boxing match, let alone training for one, but times have changed for the boxing gym.

Ms Ramsey was one of three women practising hooks and jabs in a packed room at the Islington Boxing Club in North London. They are representative of a reversal of fortunes for a sport that has doubled in the past three years, with a ninefold increase in women fighters.

Boxing coaches believe that even if Joe Calzaghe, the undefeated super middleweight champion from Newbridge in Wales, loses his title tonight to Bernard Hopkins, his American challenger, there will soon be a new crop of young Britons to succeed him.

British boxing was on the ropes, if not on the canvas, in the 1990s, when severe injuries sustained by Michael Watson and Gerald McClellan gave fresh impetus to the British Medical Association (BMA) campaign to ban the sport. Doctors argued that even if boxing was not the deadliest sport – an accolade shared by horse racing and sky diving – it was unacceptably dangerous and caused brain damage.

The disappearance of boxing from inner-city boxing clubs, combined with the flight of big fights from terrestrial to satellite television, made it harder to attract new talent to the ring.

This suddenly changed in 2000 when Audley Harrison became the first Briton for 32 years to win an Olympic gold medal in boxing. Four years later Amir Khan, a 17-year-old lightweight and the only British boxer at the Athens Games, won silver.

The Amateur Boxing Association has a fifth more clubs than it did before Khan’s victory and its 15,000-strong membership now includes 480 female fighters. Lottery funding from Sport England rose from £42,000 a year to £550,000 after the association argued that the sport could get Britain fit and provide a focal point for fractured communities.

Paul King, the association’s chief executive, said that Asian men, in particular, had been inspired by Khan’s success: “Some 18 per cent of our members are from the black and ethnic minorities – there is no other sport apart from football that can claim that.” Khan was the only British boxer at the Athens Olympics. At the games in Beijing this year there will be seven.

Enzo Giordano, 37, the owner of the Islington Boxing Club, said that the saving grace for boxing in the early 1990s was Boxercise, the American concept of using boxing training for fitness rather than fights. It introduced women to the sport, from which they were banned as amateur competitors in Britain until 1996. The ban on professional female boxers was broken in 1998 when Jane Couch won an employment tribunal case against the British Boxing Board of Control.

The BMA, however, still wants to ban boxing. A spokeswoman said: “Tragically, some boxers die in the ring. The longer you box, the greater the risk.” Big fight preview, page 88 Match reports on the move Calzaghe v Hopkins from 0430 Sunday. Text Times to 86626

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