BEIJING: Two boxers tipped for Olympic gold didn’t even make it into the last 16 after losing in Beijing here yesterday.
In a reverse of the 2007 world championship final, reigning global featherweight king Albert Selimov of Russia was well beaten 14-7 by Ukraine’s Vasyl Lomachenko.
And in the lightweight division, North Korea’s Kim Song-guk, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist, went out by the stunningly large margin of 13-3 against French outsider Daouda Sow.
Kim’s exit strengthened Alexey Tischenko’s position as the new favorite for the lightweight gold.
The Russian kept his power dry as he made it into the last 16 of the 60kg category.
Tischenko, the 2004 Olympic and 2005 world champion at featherweight before moving up a division, saw off Tunisia’s Saifeddine Nejmaoui 10-2. Afterwards Tischenko stressed he’d deliberately kept something in reserve.
“I tried not to spend too much energy and to defend mostly,” he explained. “The other guy got too close and clinched too much.
“It was not a very beautiful bout and I didn’t like it. This bout was neither easy nor hard. I’ll be better later.” His hopes of adding a second gold medal to the one he won in Athens four years ago were given a huge boost even before the tournament started.
Reigning world lightweight champion Frankie Gavin, who beat Tischenko in the semifinals of last year’s world championships in Chicago, was withdrawn by the British team after concerns he would not make the weight.
One of Tischenko’s major rivals for gold in China is Yordenis Ugas, the only current member of the once all-conquering Cuban team to have won a world or Olympic title now that most of the Caribbean island’s leading fighters have either retired or defected to the professional ranks.
Yorgas, the 2005 world champion, proved too much for Hamza Krazou, thrashing the Algerian 21-3.
He is now set to face the dangerous Domenico Valentino, runner-up to Gavin in Chicago, after the Italian beat Morocco’s Tahar Tamsamani 15-4.
And the Cuban star was well aware that tougher challenges lay ahead.
“This time I won but the truth is that the level (of opposition) will be getting higher in the next bouts so I can’t slip up.”
Tishchenko, who has a day job as a professor of boxing at a university back home in Siberia, lost a semifinal bout at last year’s World Championships to Britain’s Frankie Gavin, who declared himself out of the Olympics last Thursday because he couldn’t make weight.
Tishchenko could become just the fourth boxer in Olympic history to win gold medals in two weight classes, joining Hungary’s Laszlo Papp, Cuba’s Angel Herrera and American Oliver Kirk, who won at both 115 and 125 pounds in Olympic boxing’s debut in St. Louis in 1904.
