NEW DELHI // The focus in Commonwealth Games boxing has finally moved from the weighing scales to the ring. Faulty readings from the scales on the eve of competition caused a panic as boxers tried to lose weight in order to be eligible for their respective categories.
Anthony Taylor of New Zealand said "it certainly should not have happened", but was among those looking ahead to upcoming bouts.
Taylor, a last-minute inclusion in the national squad following an appeal to the New Zealand Olympic Committee, said yesterday that competitors had been rattled but were now looking forward to the competition. "We have to put that behind us. In the end, it is all right since the official weighing in was only today," Taylor said after winning his 64kg first round bout against Mokhachane Moshoeoe of Lesotho by a 5-2 margin.
The problem with the scales became evident when some boxers recorded weights at the weighin that were more than 1kg heavier than expected. Many went for runs and visited the sauna in a bid to lose weight. The fault was confirmed when a 50-kg weight registered as 51.4. The scales were replaced. "The weighing scales made me lose more weight than I needed to," Bradley Saunders of England said after winning his 64kg bout against Dominic Boatswain of Grenada.
"But it was spot on today and we only got to worry about bouts," Saunders, a winner of the bronze medal at the World Championships in Chicago in 2007, said. Boxers are now marking out their potential opponents. Haroon Khan, younger brother of WBA world light welterweight champion Amir Khan, made his debut for Pakistan with an easy 12-1 stoppage victory against Sunday Elias of Tanzania. Ignored by England selectors and thus representing Pakistan, he said it would be a challenge to take on the likes of Andrew Selby of Wales, a European bronze medallist, whom he could meet in the third round.
"They will be tough and I'm sure they will want to beat me as much as I want to beat them," he said.
Damien Hooper, a gold medallist at the Youth Olympics in Singapore earlier this year, said he had marked out Indian Vijender Singh as the biggest threat to his gold medal aspirations in the 75kg category.
"He [Singh] is the one to watch out for and I have a potential semi-final clash with him," said the 18-year-old Australian after scoring a 16-3 verdict over Lad Agege of Nauru. Singh, an Olympic bronze medallist, is India's top hope in boxing.
* Associated Press
