Lovlina assures India of first boxing medal at Tokyo Olympics

Debutant Lovlina Borgohain (69kg) assured India of their first boxing medal at the ongoing Olympic Games when she upstaged former world champion, Nien-Chin Chen of Chinese Taipei, to enter the semifinals here on Friday.

The 23-year-old Assam boxer prevailed 4-1 to make the last four where she will square off against reigning world champion Busenaz Surmeneli of Turkey, who hammered Ukraine's Anna Lysenko in her quarterfinal bout.

Borgohain, a two-time world championship bronze medallist, displayed tremendous calm in the face of a plucky opponent, who had beaten her in the past.

She was aggressive to start with, followed it up with a tremendous counter-attacking game, and kept her defense tight in the final three minutes to emerge triumphantly.

The youngster, who was laid low by COVID-19 last year and missed a training trip to Europe because of it, let out a huge scream after the referee raised her hand, pent-up emotions finally getting the better of her.

Borgohain started as a kickboxer before Sports Authority of India's Padum Boro, while scouting for talent in Assam's Golaghat district, noticed her.

He introduced her to boxing and she took to it like fish to water, winning a bronze medal in her debut world championship in 2018, following it up with another bronze the next year.

She is also a two-time Asian Championships bronze winner.

India's previous boxing medals have come through Vijender Singh (2008) and M C Mary Kom (2012). Both of them had won bronze medals and Borgohain would look to better that.

Earlier, Simranjit Kaur (60kg) lost to Thailand's Sudaporn Seesondee in the pre-quarterfinals to make an early exit from the Games here.

The 26-year-old Indian seeded fourth went down 0-5 despite a gritty performance.

She was impressive in the opening round and seemed to have caught Seesondee on the back-foot with her measured approach, sticking to a counter-attacking strategy.

However, the judges ruled unanimously in favor of the Thai, causing Simranjit to be a tad reckless in the second round.

The Indian paid for the hyper-aggressive approach in the first few seconds itself when Seesondee managed to connect some eye-catching left hooks.

The defensive errors in the second put paid to Simranjit's chances and even though she gave it her all in the third round, it needed nothing short of a demolition job to get over the line.

However, that was not to be as she bowed out following a unanimous verdict. The 29-year-old Thai is a two-time world championships medallist and also won a silver in the 2018 Asian Games.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)