M C Mary Kom (48kg) turned on the style as she advanced to the finals, while Vikas Krishan (75kg) and two other male boxers entered the semifinals on a reasonably good day for India at the 69th Strandja Memorial Tournament here today. Five-time world champion and Olympic bronze-medallist Mary Kom, targetting her third successive international gold medal, quite literally toyed with China\u2019s Ye Jiali to make the summit clash.<\/p>\n
However, another former world and Asian champion L Sarita Devi (60kg) bowed out of the competition with a bronze medal. Sarita lost to Finland\u2019s Mira Potkonen, to whom she had lost in the final of last month\u2019s India Open as well. Meena Kumari Devi (54kg) also ended with a bronze medal after losing to local favourite Stoyka Petrova despite a spirited performance.<\/p>\n
In the men\u2019s draw, former Asian Games gold-medallist Vikas Krishan (75kg), Asian Games bronze medallist Satish Kumar (+91kg) and the unheralded Gaurav Solanki (52kg) advanced to the semi-finals to assure themselves of medals. While Gaurav pummelled Kyrgyzstan\u2019s Azat Usenaliev, Vikas edged past Kazakhstan\u2019s Tursynbay Kulakhmet in a split verdict to make the last-four stage. It was a significant victory for Vikas, who is returning to action after recovering from a hand injury, which forced him out of the national championships as well as the India Open last month.<\/p>\n
In the evening session, Satish hardly broke a sweat against Iran\u2019s Iman Ramezanpoudelavar in his quarterfinal victory. Their victories took the total number of male boxers in the semi-finals to five. Earlier, India Open gold-medallist Amit Panghal (49kg) also made the semi-final stage along with last edition\u2019s silver-medallist Mohammed Hussamuddin (56kg).<\/p>\n
Bowing out today in the quarterfinal stage was Manish Panwar (81kg), losing to Russia\u2019s Ilyas Mutaev in a unanimous verdict. India are assured of 10 medals at the event \u2014 five men and an equal number of women in various stages of medal rounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
M C Mary Kom (48kg) turned on the style as she advanced to the finals, while Vikas Krishan (75kg) and two other male […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22973,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22974,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22972\/revisions\/22974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}