M.C. Mary Kom gave India’s battered boxing team something to celebrate when she won the women’s flyweight gold at the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, yesterday.
Kom came from behind to beat Kazakhstan’s Zhaina Shekerbekova on a split decision in the 51kg division. Her win gave India their first gold medal in the ring at Incheon after teammate Sarita Devi lost a contentious decision in the lightweight division the previous day.
Devi lodged a protest after the judges ruled she had lost her semi-final to South Korea’s Park Ji-na on Tuesday.
Photo: AFP
“I was disappointed with the judges’ decision on Sarita,” Kom said. “That motivated me to perform better and I was more challenged. I tried hard to prove who I am.”
Kom, a five-time world champion and Olympic bronze medalist, had to dig deep to beat Shekerbekova, who held her own in the opening round, but was unable to hold off the Indian after that.
“It was 50:50 in the first round,” Kom said. “I didn’t catch up to the opponent. She was very strong, fast and speedy, but in the other rounds, I got going and the match started getting easier.”
Kom’s win was her first at the Asian Games after she finished with bronze four years ago and her first major title in more than two years after she took a break to have her third child.
At yesterday’s medal presentation, Devi broke down in tears. She went to the podium, but refused to let the medal be placed over her neck. Instead, she took it in her hand, went across and appeared to slip it onto Park’s neck.
Sarita said she refuses the medal to make a point and “was ready to face any repercussions” for her behavior.
In another controversy, Malaysia yesterday refused to hand back the Games gold medal won by a wushu athlete who failed a doping test, as a fifth athlete became snared in the hunt for banned drugs at the event.
In the latest case, a teenaged Syrian karate competitor tested positive for the anabolic agent clenbuterol.
Malaysia is infuriated by the expulsion on Tuesday of wushu champion Tai Cheau Xuen from the 45-nation Games for testing positive for the stimulant sibutramine. Yesterday, it made a formal appeal to the international Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) over the way her drug test was handled, Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) officials said.
The Swiss-based court has set up a special unit in Incheon to handle disputes at the Games, where 9,500 athletes are competing.
“The CAS will make its decision on whether or not to restore the gold within 24 hours,” OCA director-general Husain al-Musallam said.
Olympic Council of Malaysia secretary-general Sieh Kok Chi told reporters the gold awarded to the Tai on Sept. 20 is still in Malaysian hands. Other officials have pleaded the case that there could have been a mixup in the test samples.
Malaysia’s head of mission Danyal Balagopal told Malaysian newspaper the Star it had taken about 16 hours to get the results of Tai’s test back.
“We usually know the result as soon as it is brought to the lab,” he was quoted as saying. “On the day when the urine was taken from Tai, there were five samples placed together. There is a possibility that it was accidentally switched.”
Tai, who turns 23 today, has garnered widespread sympathy in her homeland. Her father, T.W. Tai, 55, said his daughter “will not consume performance enhancing drugs to boost her prospects of winning.”
A Tajik soccer player, a Cambodian soft tennis player and an Iraqi weightlifter had also failed drug tests before Syrian Nour-Aldin al-Kurdi became the fifth athlete expelled from the Incheon Games.
Al-Kurdi, 19, tested positive for the anabolic agent clenbuterol, notorious as a muscle-building aid, on Sept. 25 before the karate contest had even started.
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The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
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