Ukraine’s Danilchenko eliminates Dingko

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Sydney: Asian Games gold medallist Dingko Singh was shown the way out by a far superior Sergei Danilchenko of Ukraine in the second round of the 54-kg bantamweight category in the Olympic boxing competition.

Danilchenko, the 1998 European champion in his weight category dominated the bout against a rather tentative Dingko. The Dingko, one saw at Bangkok Asian Games and here, were vastly different.

Gone was that unbridled aggression and nimble footwork. Instead there weretimes, when he seemed to be holding Danilchenko and in the first round, the referee had to separate the two.

After about a minute or so of feeling his way around, the Ukrainian, who is among the favourites in the weight category, went on the charge and took control of the fight. Dingko had got a first round bye.

Dingko, whose pre-Games report had suggested injury to his hand, may well have had that despite denials from the boxing federation. His tentativeness did suggest a lurking fear, which could have been compounded by apsychological block.

The 27-year-old Danilchenko, who had hurt his leg earlier this year seemed to have recovered fully from it. In fact he had qualified for the Olympics in his first tournament on return from the injury.

Once the initial assessment was over Danilchenko launched an attack and scored three quick points with two rights and left for a 3-0 lead in the first round.

That lead increased as he won the next round 6-2 to make it 8-2 midway through the four-round bout. In the third round, Danilchenko once again picked two good points to put himself out of reach and lead 11-2 and in the final round Dingko made some valiant attempts to go for the big punch, which was the only way he could have won his bout.

But Danilchenko was too wary to walk into any such trap. The round ended3-3, but Danilchenko had done enough to coast along 14-5 and move into the pre-quarter finals.

In an earlier bout, another Asian crashed out as Justin Kane, a home crowd favourite outclassed Thai boxer, Sontaya Wongprates, who had lost to Dingko in the Asian Games semi-final in Bangkok in 1998.

Of the four Indian boxers, now only two are left. Suresh Singh had earlier been eliminated in the 48-kg first round, while Jitender Kumar in 75-kg andGurcharan Singh in 81-kg moved up impressively.

India Abroad News Service