The Hindu : Sport : Suranjoy Singh ends India’s fifteen-year gold drought in the Asian championship

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Sunday, Jun 14, 2009
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Suranjoy Singh ends India’s fifteen-year gold drought in the Asian championship

Thokchom Nanao Singh and Jai Bhagwan settle for silver medals

Suranjoy Singh

New Delhi: Suranjoy Singh gave India its first Asian championship gold in 15 years while Thokchom Nanao Singh and Jai Bhagwan settled for silver medals as the country’s boxers rounded off a 27-year best performance in the elite event in Zhuhai, China on Saturday.

India ended its campaign with a gold, two silver and four bronze medals.

The bronze went to Jitender Kumar (54kg) Vijender Singh (75kg), Dinesh Kumar (81kg) and Paramjit Samota (+91kg). The team was placed third in the overall standings behind host China and Uzbekistan.

The performance this time is a marked improvement from 1982 championships held in Seoul where the country’s boxers notched up two gold, an equal number of silver and a bronze medal.

The last gold medal for India in the Asian championship came in the 1994 edition in Tehran where Rajkumar Sangwan finished on top in the super heavyweight category.

And on Saturday, it was a fly weight (51kg) boxer who broke the 15-year jinx. Suranjoy, a junior World championship bronze medallist in 2004, beat Li Chao of China 9-8 in a thrilling encounter.

“It was certainly not one of my best performances because my opponent came very close to upstaging me but I am thrilled to win India’s first gold medal here in 15 years,” an elated Suranjoy said.

“I didn’t keep track of whether I was leading or trailing and that was a good thing considering it was such a close bout. I attacked him hard in the third round after taking it slightly easy in the first two rounds,” Suranjoy, the reigning National champion, said.

Nanao goes down

However, 18-year-old Youth World champion Nanao Singh (48kg) was not as lucky and went down 8-9 to Thailand’s Pongprayoon Keaw.

In the light weight summit clash, Jai Bhagwan lost 3-8 to Hudayberdiev Serdar of Turkmenistan to settle for the second place. The Haryana-boxer was a bronze medallist in the 2005 Asian championships in Vietnam and despite the change of colour of his medal this time, he was disappointed at missing the gold.

Sandhu, who was also the coach of the team both in 1982 and 1994, said the country’s boxers made quite a reputation for themselves this time. — PTI

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