Indian boxers strike gold at Czech boxing tourney

The Indian pugilists put up a spectacular performance to clinch five gold medals at the tourney, as Shiva Thapa, Manoj Kumar, Amit Phangal, Gaurav Bidhuri and Satish Kumar all had successful bouts.

Published : Jul 30, 2017 11:52 IST

Shiva clinched a dominant 5-0 victory over Slovakia’s Filip Meszaros to record another morale-boosting triumph ahead of next month’s World Championships in Hamburg, Germany.
Shiva clinched a dominant 5-0 victory over Slovakia’s Filip Meszaros to record another morale-boosting triumph ahead of next month’s World Championships in Hamburg, Germany.
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Shiva clinched a dominant 5-0 victory over Slovakia’s Filip Meszaros to record another morale-boosting triumph ahead of next month’s World Championships in Hamburg, Germany.

Indian boxers packed quite a heavy punch at the 48th Grand Prix Usti Nad Labem, clinching five gold, two silver and one bronze medal at the event in the Czech Republic.

World Championships bronze-medallist Shiva Thapa (60kg), former Commonwealth Games gold-medallist Manoj Kumar (69kg), Amit Phangal (52kg), Gaurav Bidhuri (56kg) and Satish Kumar (+91kg) claimed gold medals after winning their respective summit clashes on Saturday night.

Kavinder Bisht (52kg) and Manish Panwar (81kg), on the other hand, settled for silver medals. Earlier, Sumit Sangwan (91kg) had claimed a bronze after going down in the semifinal.

Amit and Kavinder opened the proceedings for the country in an all-Indian final. Of the two, Amit is a light flyweight (49kg) boxer but competed in the flyweight division in this event. He defeated Kavinder 3-2 to claim gold.

Next up was Gaurav against Poland’s Iwanow Jaroslaw and the Indian had no trouble notching up a 5-0 win.

Shiva, who recently won a silver medal at the Asian Championships, also clinched a dominant 5-0 victory over Slovakia’s Filip Meszaros to record another morale-boosting triumph ahead of next month’s World Championships in Hamburg, Germany.

Another Hamburg-bound boxer, Manoj, too claimed a 5-0 verdict against local favourite David Kotrc. However, Satish Kumar had to stave off a stiff challenge from German Max Keller for his gold.

Manish, on the other hand, lost to Germany’s Ibragim Bazuev to settle for a silver medal.

The tournament marked the end of a fortnight-long training-cum-competition trip for the Indian boxers ahead of the world showpiece scheduled from August 25 to September 2.

Of the boxers competing in this tournament, Amit, Kavinder, Gaurav, Shiva, Manoj, Sumit and Satish will be competing in the World Championships.

The eighth Indian boxer in the fray at Hamburg will be Vikas Krishan, (75kg) who did not accompany the team on this trip and instead trained in Pune.

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