Manju one step from gold, Mary Kom feels robbed
At the national selection trials in August for the women’s world championships, Manju Rani’s childhood coach Sahab Singh and uncle Sunil Kumar looked tensed as they watched her bouts. They were hoping Manju didn’t get a raw deal as was the case earlier in her career and had to shift from Haryana and represent Punjab. Having made the switch in 2017, Rani won the national championships in January, and there has been no looking back.
“Whenever there is a trial or fight, we just pray she doesn’t get a biased decision because she has suffered a lot in Haryana and we had to enter her for competitions from Punjab. Once she made it to the national camp, she has been taken good care of and the trials have been open and fair,” said Sahab Singh. Rani’s stature has rapidly risen in the last 10 months since she started representing India at the international level. On Saturday, she brought out her fearless streak to defeat Thailand’s Chuthamat Raksat 4-1 in 48kg and make it to the world championships final in Ulan-Ude, Russia. Rani will face secondseeded Russian Ekaterina Paltceva in the gold medal match.
Her career upswing this year has been marked with silver at the Strandja International and bronze in the Thailand Open and India Open. “I just want to win gold and hear my national anthem,” said Rani.
She was the only Indian among four quarter-finalists to reach the final with MC Mary Kom (51kg), Jamuna Boro (54kg) and Lovlina Borgohain (69kg) losing their semi-final matches. Six-time champion Mary Kom lost a tough bout to second-seed Busenaz Cakiroglu of Turkey, while Borgohain (69kg) was beaten 2-3 after giving her all against China’s Yang Liu.
In a fight where both tall boxers were on attacking mode, Borgohain never stepped back and kept up the tempo. The Assam girl has secured her second medal from the worlds, after winning bronze at home on debut last year. India coach Rafaelle Bergamasco believes Lovlina was a clear winner and the team’s offer of protest was turned down by the technical observer.
ROW OVER PROTEST
The Indian team was upset with the results. Bergamasco was angry as the rules of protest were changed on the penultimate day of the competition. The AIBA technical bench told the teams in the morning that a protest will be allowed only if the result is a close 3-2. It meant Mary Kom, who wanted to lodge a protest, could not as she had lost 1-4.
“It’s a very bad situation. We are unhappy with what happened. You can’t change the rules in between (during) the competition. Today, during the technical team briefing (they) told us in the morning that a protest can be done only if the score is 3-2,” he said. “Mary Kom played very well. The opponent was strong but we thought Mary was clear winner in the first round, and the second and third rounds were close. In case of Lovlina, we wanted to protest but it was not accepted. I have to say if these things continue to happen in scoring, we might not see boxing in the 2024 Olympics,” Bergamasco said.