First three boxing golds awarded

03 August 2002

England’s Darran Langley threw away a healthy lead in the final round to lose the light flyweight gold medal to India’s Mohammed Qamar 25-27.

Andrew Kooner lost his fight on a countback

Qamar had a brilliant final round to overhaul the deficit and, despite suffering a standing eight count as Langley tried to get back into the contest, countered well and scored this decisive point in the last 10 seconds to take gold.

Langley said afterwards:

"I didn’t box as well as I could have. I wanted to win gold here in front of my friends and family. I‘ve had some bad luck – a cold, a twisted ankle. The only time I got out of bed was to fight, so I surprised myself.”

Next up was the flyweight final and Kennedy Kayanta of Zambia easily out-pointed Luza of Botswana to take Zambia’s first medal of the Commonwealth Games.

In the third fight of the day Justin Kane won an amazing fight on a countback after tying with Kooner of Canada 34-34. A fantastic final round had the MEN Arena crowd on its feet by the end as the standard of boxing didn’t fail to impress.