Olympics: Sahana Kumari fails to clear high jump qualifiers

Kashmir Times. Dated: 8/9/2012 11:36:48 PM

LONDON, Aug 9(Agencies): India's Sahana Kumari got knocked out of the women's high jump at the Olympic Games after clearing 1.80m and finishing at joint 15th in the Group B of the qualifying competition here on Thursday.
The 30-year-old athlete sailed over the bar at the first attempt with a 1.80m leap but failed in her endeavour to clear the 1.85m mark in all her three attempts and got eliminated.
The Bangalore-based athlete had earlier made it to the Games with a leap of 1.92m at the National Inter-State Senior Athletics Championships in Hyderabad on June 23, which erased the meet mark of 1.91m held by Bobby Aloysius of Kerala since 2004.
The best clearance in the event was by Uzbekistan's Svetlana Radzivil, who topped Group B with her season's best of 1.96m.
Apart from Svetlana, four others - Belgium's Tia Helle, USA's Chaunte Lowe and Russia's Svetlana Shkolina and Irina Gordeeva - made it to the finals from this Group with a clearance of 1.93m.
Meanwhile, Spain's Ruth Beitia along with Russia's Anna Chicherova, Sweden's Emma Green Tregaro and France's Melanie Melfort topped Group A with a leap of 1.93m.
The other athletes who qualified from Group A include Burcu Ayhan from Turkey, USA's Brigetta Barrett and Lithuania's Airine Palsyte.
The final of the event will be held on August 11.
WRESTLING: Despite losing her opening bout in the women's freestyle (55kg) category, India's Geeta Phogat is still in the medal contention after entering the repechage round where she will meet Tetyana Lazareva of Ukraine.
Geeta, who lost her first round match against world number two Tonya Lynn Verbeeek of Canada earlier on Thursday, entered the repechage round after the Canadian reached the final. According to the rules, wrestler who lost to the finalist goes through to the repechage round where the athlete needs to win two matches to win the bronze.
Geeta will wrestle in the repechage round with Lazareva and if she wins, she will proceed to the bronze medal play-off against Castillo Renteria of Colombia.
Earlier in the day, the 23-year-old Geeta - gold-medallist in the 2010 Commonwealth Games - went down to the Canadian who recorded a 4-2 victory.
Both grapplers started cautiously in the first period but Verbeek – who turns 35 next week – managed to eke out a point towards the end of the period, though the Indian was in an advantageous position. In the second period, Geeta raised her performance and won the round 1-0 to level score 1-1 after the first two periods.
But Verbeek – a teacher by profession – relied on all her experience to turn the table on the Indian by winning the third and final round 3-1.
"I fought hard and gave it all. She is a very strong wrestler and has a lot of experience, so it is not easy to defeat her," Phogat said after her match.
"I made a few mistakes in the first round. I had a clinch but still conceded that point. At this level, you have to get the point when you are in an advantageous position," she said. "I have to improve to be able to counter such high quality wrestlers. I will gain experience from all this and come back stronger," she said.
BOXING: boxer Devendro Singh's bid for an Olympic bronze medal was dashed after he succumbed to Ireland's Paddy Barnes in a high-voltage quarter final contest which was marked by some debatable refereeing and controversial warnings at the Excel Arena.
The 20-year-old Devendro fought gallantly last night but could not prevail over his stronger opponent who scripted a 23-18 victory to romp into the semi-finals.
But the high-scoring result left the Indian contingent fuming as they claimed that the refereeing had gone heavily against the diminutive Indian who was warned once in the second round.
With Devendro's exit, the Indian challenge in the boxing ring also came to an end with only MC Mary Kom providing the spark with a historic bronze medal in women's boxing which has been introduced in the Olympics for the first time.
Backed by the noisy crowd, Barnes took an early lead by winning the first round 7-5 and maintained the tempo right through to send the Indian packing out of his maiden Olympics much to the disappointment of the Indian fans.
Both the boxers started the contest on a very aggressive note as they unleashed a flurry of punches at each other but the Irish pugilist relied on his experience to gain the upper hand.
Trailing by two points, Devendro continued to be aggressive but a warning against him gave his opponent a bigger lead by the end of the second round which ended 10-5.
The third and final round saw both the boxers going all out and Devendro desperately tried to regain lost ground. Barnes, who had eked out a comfortable lead by then, was warned in the third round. But he ensured that he did not concede too many points.
The Indian boxing contingent was livid with the point decisions which they claimed had been extremely unfair on Devendro.
"There were so many mistakes against our boxers. He (Barnes) was not hitting the right spots and still getting points. It was not fair," India's foreign coach BI Fernandez said after the bout.
"The refereeing was poor, not only in this bout but many other Indian bouts. It is very sad, but we have to live with it. The opponent was clearly holding, but he didn't say anything," Fernandez said.
On the mood in the Indian boxing camp, he said, "It's very difficult. We deserved to get a medal here."
Coach Gurbaksh Singh Sandhu said some times referees go with the crowd and Devendro was hit hard by that.
"Sometimes the referees go with the crowd. The referees use their own mind, I dont want to say too much on it," Sandhu said.
On the performance of the Indian team, he said "I am extremely happy with the overall performance of the Indian boxers. I am very sad because I think I am responsible for not being able to translate those performances into medal winning performances."
"We had come for medals. We are very grateful to Mary Kom who has come to our rescue and got a medal," he said.
Sandhu was, however, full of praise for young Devendro who fought his heart out but was unlucky not to make it to the semi-final.
"He fought his heart out, he was aggressive right through. What else do you expect from such a young boxer? I am happy with his performance," Sandhu said.

 

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