India’s Lovlina Borgohain lost her quarter-final bout under the 75 Kg category to China’s Li Qian and stepped out of the Paris Olympics 2024.
India's boxing campaign at the ongoing Olympics came to a medal-less end after Tokyo edition bronze-winner Lovlina Borgohain (75kg) bowed out following a hard-fought quarterfinal loss to China's Li Qian in the women's competition here on Sunday.
Borgohain, the reigning world champion in the category, went down 1-4 to the Tokyo Games silver-winning 34-year-old in a messy contest during which both the boxers were repeatedly cautioned for clinching and holding.
The 26-year-old's loss ended after Nishant Dev was ousted from the men's 71kg quarterfinals on Saturday night, also a close contest.
Borgohain was defeated with a score of 4-1 by a split verdict from judges.
It was a pacey start to the proceedings as Borgohain and Qian quickly got into a tangle.
However, none of the boxers seemed willing to launch the first attack.
The holding and clinching started pretty early in the bout and the referee had to repeatedly step in to separate the two old foes.
Qian seemed determined while Borgohain came across as the more animated of the two early on.
Quian won the first round by a split decision.
It was once again 3-2 in favour of Qian but with a different set of judges scoring in her favour this time, she only had a slender one-point lead on one card, while the remaining four were tied and then the Indian won the second round by a split decision of 3-2 with four of the five judges favoring Borgohain before the final round.
The holding and clinching continued in the third round too and both the women seemed a bit drained.
However, Qian showed great presence of mind throughout to keep Borgohain at a distance. Borgohain was not up to it when it came to controlling the pace of the bout and repeatedly took hits on counter-attacks.
However, the Chinese pulled in some jabs in the final three minutes and scored 4-1, enough for her to enter the semi-final.
Lovlina won the Bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics and defeated Sunniva Hofstad in RO-16 to enter the quarters.
A six-strong boxing contingent, comprising four women and two men, was representing the country in the Games. Out of these, four had crashed out in the preliminary stage itself.
The Assamese had fought Qian in the Asian Games final last year and gone down 0-5. She later beat Qian in the semifinals of the world championship semifinal in 2023.
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