How was Petecio, who still had two fights left if she were to win a gold medal, assured of taking home a bronze? In fact, how were all four of the boxers who made it to the semi-finals assured of taking home a medal when there are only traditionally three medals up for grabs: a gold, a silver and a bronze?
In Olympic boxing — and in contact sports at the games more generally — unlike other sports, there are technically four medals up for grabs: a gold, a silver and two bronze medals. Boxing is one of the oldest of Olympic events , dating back to 7th century Greece.
But much has changed since the ancient era of no rounds, weight classes or time limits. Can you imagine the damage they did to their opponents back then when the only way to win was via knockout or surrender? Diagoras of Rhodes, one famed fighter who won at the games in BC, was said to have just let his opponents punch him repeatedly until he found a way to knock them out.
It has of course gotten a bit safer in the ring since the days of Diagoras, even if some of the changes have been pretty recent. Previously, boxers who made it to the semi-finals had to defeat their opponents to have a chance to fight for gold.
First of all, there is no proper rank based draw in sports like Judo, Taekwondo and Wrestling, unlike sports like Tennis. Hence, there is a chance of two top-ranked athletes clashing in the very first round. This will definitely lead to an exit for one of the top contenders. To prevent such happenings, the repechage was introduced. If there are a total of 16 wrestlers, the ones losing in the very first round and the second round, will go to the first round of repechage, with the winner of that round first repechage round , meeting the loser of the semi-final, for the Bronze medal match.
This is applicable for the first 8 of the lot. The same happens with the next 8 wrestlers. So two sets of repechages, and hence two Bronze medals. This is usually the case, since there are only four rounds in combat sports at the Olympics Round of 16, Quarterfinals, Semifinals and Finals. However, things are quite different in Boxing. There are no repechage matches in Boxing.
However, 2 Bronze medals are still awarded. The reason for the same began at the Helsinki Olympics when only Gold and Silver medals were awarded in Boxing, and the losers in the semi-finals were only awarded the Olympic Diploma.
This tradition was changed at the Melbourne Olympics And, since then two bronze medals are being awarded. Boxers have a jam-packed schedule and usually, semi-final bouts tend to be draining with the loser usually sapped off his energy.
This left quite a number of fans confused. Indian boxing legends Mary Kom and Vijender Singh were awarded two bronze medals in the Olympics , despite losing their respective semi-finals at London and Beijing It is worth mentioning that grabbing a semi-final spot is an automatic bronze medal. However, there weren't always two bronze medal winners in boxing. List of Indian athletes qualified for Tokyo Olympics. Boxing made its Olympic debut in , and since then it featured a bronze medal match for the losing semi-finalists whereas the top two boxers received the gold and silver medal, a standard rule in most sports.
Both losers of the semi-finals were to be placed third and neither of them was awarded a medal. It was introduced due to the short interval between the bronze medal and the gold medal playoff as the boxers did not get enough time to recover, which risked their health. This practised continued for five editions till the Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Tokyo Olympics Schedule: Check the complete list of sporting events.
0コメント