Pinoy jins suffer heavy losses in world tiff
Filipino jins suffered early losses and fell short of podium finishes in the 2015 World Taekwondo Championships at Traktor Arena in Chelyabinsk, Russia.
Middleweight Kirstie Elaine Alora, a bronze medalist in the Incheon Asian Games, reached the Round-of-16 but failed to advance further as she bowed to Serbian Milica Mandic, 2-12, in their battle for a quarterfinal berth Saturday.
Alora, the reigning SEA Games female -73kg titlist, earlier took a bye in the first round then won by disqualification over Jordan’s Rima Ananbeh in the Round-of-32.
Asian Youth Games gold medalist Pauline Lopez nipped Ethiopian Belyanesh Alemu, 10-4, in the Last-64 but absorbed a 2-9 setback to Hungarian Barbara Ducz in the next round to bomb out of the medal chase in the bantamweight class (-53kg).
Finweight Jenar Torillos and heavyweight Kristopher Robert Uy couldn’t hurdle their first assignments.
Torillos, who had a bye in the Round-of-128, dropped a 4-8 defeat to Thai Ramnarong Sawekwiharee, who went on to cop a bronze in the men’s -54kg play while Uy, the 2013 SEAG kingpin in the male +87kg category, lost to French Omar El Yazidi, 1-5, in the Last-64.
They followed the fate of teammates who saw action the previous days.
Lightweight Samuel Morrison, a bronze medalist in Incheon, beat Iceland’s Kristmundur Gislason, 8-6, and British Andrew Deer, 16-14, but got stopped in his tracks by Russian Albert Gaun, 11-19, in the male -74kg Group B Round-of-16 hostilities.
World University Games champ Francis Agojo, competing in the male -58kg Group A, edged Libyan Yousef Shrina, 20-19, before losing to Russian Ruslan Poiseev, 5-18, in the Last 32.
Incheon Asiad bronze winners Benjamin Keith Sembrano (male -68kg Group B) and Levita Ronna Ilao (female -49) yielded their first-round duels to Portuguese Nuno Costa, 1-14, and Aruba’s Monica Pimentel Rodriguez, 5-7, respectively.
Irene Therese Bermejo lost to eventual female -46kg queen Thai Panipak Wongpattanakit, 3-19, in the Round-of-64.