BEIJING: Demetrius Andrade started out in an indecisive panic, as if he was certain the judges would refuse to score his punches even if he threw them. The American welterweight then stormed from the Olympic ring after the bell, even before his South Korean opponent’s arm was raised.
Kazakhstan’s Serik Sapiyev handled his own narrow loss to Thailand’s Manus Boonjumnong with a bit more serenity, yet both world champions got the same sad result: They’re going home from the Olympics without a medal.
South Korean Kim Jung-joo and Boonjumnong joined three Cuban boxers and Chinese welterweight Hanati Silamu with quarterfinal victories last night. The wins set the Olympic tournament’s first three semifinal fields, guaranteeing medals to every winner.
They won’t be joined by Andrade or Sapiyev, the seventh and eighth world champions to lose before medal competition, or Gennady Kovalev, the eighth Russian to fall. Clemente Russo, the Italian heavyweight who won the night’s final bout, is the only world champion so far guaranteed to add Olympic hardware to his title from last November in Chicago.
Andrade was one of just two Americans left in the Olympic field. Thanks to heavyweight Deontay Wilder’s victory on punch statistics in a bout that finished in a 10-all tie with Morocco’s Mohamed Arjaoui, the US won’t leave an Olympics empty-handed for the first time — but Wilder’s single medal is the lowest total in team history.
“I don’t want the world to remember Team USA as being failures,” Wilder said.
With a week still left in the Beijing Games, it’s already too late to stop that. But with so many surprising results in these Olympics, Andrade’s loss to Kim, a bronze medalist in Athens, hardly seemed unlikely, despite Andrade’s lofty international ranking and strong first two bouts.
Andrade controlled the action for much of his 11-9 defeat, but repeatedly failed to land scoring punches against his defensive, counterpunching foe. After the bell, he rested his head on the rope in frustrated exhaustion before looking up to the stands at his father.
Paul Andrade yelled, “That’s all right, Boo Boo,” as he pounded his chest and held his arms open wide.
Roy Jones Jr.’s championship-bout loss to South Korea’s Park Si-hun at the 1988 Seoul Games was so egregiously incorrect that it led to the introduction of computer scoring in amateur boxing. Most observers — particularly Kim’s joyous camp — thought Andrade’s loss was not in that category.
Andrade then temporarily lost his class, leaving the ring before the formal verdict. The class of Workers’ Gymnasium still belongs to Cuba, which sent three fighters through to medal competition. Heavyweight Osmai Acosta, welterweight Carlos Banteaux and light welterweight Roniel Iglesias finished their opponents without putting anything in the hands of judges.
