Lovlina Borgohain missed out on an opportunity of a second Olympic medal as she misplaced to China’s Li Qian on the Paris Olympics on Sunday afternoon.
A win right this moment would have confirmed Lovlina’s second Olympic medal [all four semifinalists are awarded medals in boxing] and made her the primary Indian to do this, nevertheless it was not meant to be as she misplaced to a well-recognized foe in Qian.
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The chances had been stacked towards Lovlina going into the bout, contemplating she had misplaced to Qian the final two instances they met: within the 2023 Asian Video games closing and on the Czechia Grand Prix in June. However what would have given Lovlina the assumption was the truth that she had overwhelmed Qian enroute her gold medal on the 2023 World Championships.
Lovlina started the bout nicely as she discovered her vary and maintained her form. The Indian pulled off a few high-quality left-hook + right-jab combos, however Li matched her punch for punch. It was a carefully contested spherical that narrowly went the Chinese language boxer’s manner.
Li, who received silver on the Tokyo Olympics, launched a flurry of punches as quickly because the bell rang for the second spherical and caught Lovlina straight within the face. Li did not do something particular per se, however managed the tempo of the spherical and Lovlina wanted to indicate intent to persuade the judges. She pulled off a neat two-punch mixture on Li, nevertheless it wasn’t sufficient because the second spherical additionally went Li’s manner. Nevertheless, Lovlina nonetheless had an opportunity: the bout was all sq. on 4 of the choose’s playing cards and just one choose had Li down as the higher boxer.
However Lovlina simply could not discover her greatest when she wanted it probably the most. The Indian landed a number of robust jabs at Li’s mid-riff, however that wasn’t sufficient to impress the judges. What Li did, although, did. She caught Lovlina in a superb 1-2 mixture that shook the Indian for a few seconds. That did the trick as Li went on to win by factors and Indian boxing’s barren run at Paris got here to an finish.
Lovlina, who moved up from the 69kg to 75kg division after the previous was dropped from the Olympic program, was amongst India’s high medal hopefuls on the Paris Olympics. She is a World champion and the Asian Video games silver medallist within the weight division and got here inside a win away from changing into one in every of Indian boxing’s GOATs. However ultimately, none of these credentials mattered. Lovlina was overwhelmed by a greater boxer. Regardless of two World champions and World’s medallists of their roster, Indian boxing returns with zero medals.