Veteran Indian boxer Mary Kom has made a great start to her Olympic campaign and has made it to the next round. For 51kg flyweight category On Sunday, she defeated Miguelina Hernandez Garcia of Dominica Republic 4-1 in the round-32 match of the 51kg flyweight category. Mary Kom’s next match will be on July 29. She will take on Colombia’s third seed Valencia Victoria.
In the first two rounds of the match, Mary Kom thought it appropriate to play a little defensively and threw punches as needed. On the other hand, Garcia tried to box aggressively.
In the third and final round, Mary was showing an aggressive game, hit some great punches. The Dominican boxer also tried to attack, but it was not enough to win the match. While four judges rated Mary Kom’s performance better, only the second judge ruled in Garcia’s favour.
Mary was given 30 marks by the first judge, 28 by the second, 29 by the third, 30 by the fourth and 29 by the fifth judge. At the same time, Garcia was given 27 by the first judge, 29 by the second, 28 by the third, 27 by the fourth and 28 by the last judge.
Mary , who hails from Manipur, is the only Indian female boxer to win an Olympic medal. Mary Kom won a bronze medal in the 51 kg flyweight category at the 2012 London Olympics. She qualified for Tokyo by reaching the semi-finals of the Asia/Oceania Olympic Qualifiers held in March 2020. Second seed Mary Kom achieved the feat by defeating Irish Magno of the Philippines 5-0 in the quarter-finals.
However, Mary Kom lost to Chinese boxer Yuan Chang in the semi-finals of this tournament. Due to which she had to be content with the bronze medal.