With each passing day, the Rio Olympics fever is rising in the state and people are going crazy over it. Earlier, the Indian gymnast Dipa Karmakar has made all the Indians proud by qualifying for vault finals and now the Haryana lad, Manoj Kumar has raised hopes for the whole Indian contingent in the 64kg welterweight category in Boxing. This win is even more valued as Manoj defeated two times Olympic bronze medalist Evaldas Petrauskas of Lithuania in the competition.
Manoj was terrific in the match and used his long height throughout the bout to maintain his lead during the entire match. Manoj was dominating all the three rounds and scored 29-28, 29-28, 28-29 verdict. He will now fight in the quarterfinals. It was a hard fought battle and now this former Asian bronze medallist will be up against fifth seed Uzbek Fazliddin Gaibnazarov in the pre-quarters scheduled on Sunday.
After his match, Manoj was very excited and said, “My opponent was strong, but my punches had power. I played according to his punches. I knew he was a hard opponent, so I didn’t go with any strategy to the ring. All strategy was made on the go”.
Other than Boxing, the game of Archery also had some positive news for Indians. The Indian Archers, Bombayla Devi, and Deepika Kumari strengthen the hopes for Medal in Women Archery for India as both of them won two games in a day to be cleared for the women’s individual recurve event.
It is the third time that 31-year-old Bombayla is competing in the finals. She had finished 24th in the ranking round and dominated Chinese Taipei’s Lin Shih-Chia 6-2 in the 1/16 elimination after beating Austria’s Laurence Baldauff in 1/32 elimination round.
The other player, Deepika also showed some outstanding skills and comprehensively defeated Italy’s Sartori Guendalina 6-2 in the 1/16 elimination, after prevailing over her opponent from Georgia, Kristine Esebua, 6-4 in the 1/32 elimination round. She belongs to Jharkhand and this is her second Olympics after losing the first round in the London Olympics four years ago. It is very appreciative that she learned from her previous defeat and strike back strongly from a set down with a dominating 24-27, 29-26, 28-26, 28-27 victory in the end.
Other than these games, there is sad news for Indians to hear that Jitu Rai, who is a winner of the gold medal in the 50m pistol event in both the Commonwealth and Asian Games two years ago, had shattered India’s hope with his exit from the game. He was scoring high from the first five rounds with 92, 95, 90, 94 and 95 scores consecutively. But, the final and sixth round of 88 points cost him his berth to finals with a low cumulative of 554 points. He was shattered after the game and said, “I let my country down. There was the wind but I don’t want to make any excuses”.
Also, the Indian Women Hockey Team who made excellent qualifiers in the quarterfinals was completely outplayed by the world’s number one Australian Team with 1-6. The defeat has dented the team’s morale. They are not out of the game but now will to face very crouching two matches with world number five United States on Thursday and world Number two Argentina on Saturday. We wish Coach Neil Hawgood and the team with lots of best wishes.
