HAMBURG: Wild card entrant Gaurav Bidhuri’s dream run at the World Boxing Championships ended with a bronze medal on Thursday after he lost his semifinal bout against American Duke Ragan here. India thus ended with a bronze medal, equalling the performance of 2009 (Vijender Singh), 2011 (Vikas Krishan) and 2015 (Shiva Thapa).
The fact that India had the biggest team (eight) this time around makes the return of a lone medal rather unsatisfactory. In the preceding tournament, Shiva had battled odds to clinch bronze. With the federation up and running, there were renewed hopes that the pugilists would raise their level. Even after taking into account Shiva’s untimely bout with sickness, apart from Gaurav, Amit Phangal (49kg) and Kavinder Singh Bisht (56kg), the rest showed that they are far from ready to take on the world.
In a bout fought primarily in defensive mode, Gaurav’s rival had a slight edge in the opening three minutes. Although both boxers spent the better part of it waiting for the other to make the first attack, Ragan seemed more in control lunging forward. Gaurav did well to connect on counter-attack but the lack of attack from his side made a lot of difference to the final outcome. The second round was fought on a more even keel and Gaurav managed to surprise his rival by cornering him on more than one occasion. Both the boxers went on the defensive in the final round but the 20-year-old American broke free with his cleanly-struck right hooks to clinch the issue.
“Both of us had studied each other’s style and were well prepared however he changed his style completely on the spot, which came to me as a surprise. His current coach used to be my coach at some point and Duke had additional inputs on my style which they used. But he fought really well,” Gaurav said Ragan will now face England’s Peter McGrail in the final
Gaurav was delighted with his journey. “This Championship has been a dream run for me, they way it started and I have never performed as well as in this Championship. My only regret is, I couldn’t gift my dad the opportunity to see me creating history by being in the final.”
Earlier, Amit and Kavinder had bowed out in the quarterfinal stage. Gaurav, who has been battling a back niggle for the last eight months, thus completed a rollercoaster ride in a tournament he hadn’t even qualified for to start with. Ousted in the Asian Championships quarterfinal stage, Gaurav had also gone on to lose the box-off for a World Championship spot.