Boxing grabs two gold medals
Lekopanye Mooketsi | Friday May 30, 2014 10:54
Kutlwano Ogaketse (men’s bantam division), Katlego Oalotse (women’s middle division weight ) and Koketso Dipogiso (women’s fly weight) all won bronze.
Botswana fielded eight boxers in the Youth Games. All the three girls in the team won medals. In the men’s light fly division finals, Otukile eliminated his Nigerian opponent Oyakojo Muyideen Ojo 2-0.
But it was the female boxer Kenosi who set the Botho College hall on fire in the light weight division finals against diminutive Algerian boxer Selmouni Chahira.
Kenosi won all the three rounds sending the crowd into a frenzy.
During the second round, the Algerian sent down Kenosi staggering with a hard blow. But this seemed to have enraged the local boxer. During the third round, Kenosi caught up with the Algerian after chasing her for quite sometime.
In the fourth round, went on rampage as she beat the daylights out of the dazed Algerian. Another exciting encounter was the boys’ super heavy weight bout between Ouarzedine Ammar of Algeria and Reda Ibrahim El Khalifa of Egypt. The heavily built Algerian was intimidating.
In the first round, the Algerian turned his opponent into a punching bag ending the fight prematurely.
The Algerian boxer won on a technical knock out. He had already finished the fight by the first round.
Another exciting bout was he girls’ middle weight division fight between Egyptian Bassant Mohamedi Arbderahman and Agwu Celina Ezinde of Nigeria.
The fight was declared over in the first round as the Egyptian corner threw in the towel. Meanwhile, Botswana boxing team team manager, Dirang Thipe said he was impressed with the performance of his boxers. “I am very happy with the team’s performance,” he said.
Thipe said they met high ranked countries in the preliminaries and this was why all his boxers could not reach the quarter finals. “We need to work hard to match the North Africans,” he said.