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Wrestler Sushil Kumar and Boxer Vijender Kumar completed a great day 12 for India at the Olympics. While Sushil won a Bronze in the Men's 66kg Freestyle event, Vijender guaranteed India another medal (minimum Bronze) by advancing to the semi-finals of the Middleweight Boxing event.

Sushil who got eliminated in the round of 16 by silver medalist Andriy Stadnik benefited from Standnik confirming a medal finish, and was entered in the repechage rounds featuring all athletes that were eliminated by either him or gold medalist Ramazan Sahin. Sushil then rattled off wins against Doug Schwab of the United States (7:4); Albert Batyrov of Belarus (8:4) and Leonid Spirindov of Kazakhstan (3:2) to c onfirm his place as one of the two bronze medalists in the event. The deciding match against Spirindov was particularly close with Sushil winning the first period 2-1, losing the second 0-1 via a technical tie-breaker (after it was nil-nil after the alloted two minutes), and winning the third again via tie-breaker using a brilliant counter-lock which placed his opponent in an unescapable position. The match was extremely cagey with neither wrestler giving an inch and especially at the end could easily have gone either way.

 

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Joining Sushil in the winners circle will be Vijender Kumar who won his quarter final bout today against Carlos Gongora of Equador by 9 points to 4. Vijender dominated from start to finish wining the opening rounds 2:0 and 2:1. The third round proved decisive with Vijender pulling away even further after landing some excellent punches and using his speed and agility to great effect to escape his opponents considerably longer reach. He went on to win this round 3:1. Carlos to his credit fought back in the 4th and managed to tie it 2:2.

Vijender has an extremely tricky next round against Cuban dynamite kid Emilio Correa Bayeaux. Emilio won his first two rounds very easily humiliating his opponents 17:4 and 18:4. He did however face stiff competition in the quarterfinals where he overcame Elshod Rasulov of Uzbekistan 9:7. This match is scheduled for the afternoon of 22nd August (time yet to be confirmed).

With the good news coming late in the day for India , it was sadly business as usual in the morning with Table Tennis star Sharath Kamal Achanta losing to Austrian Weixing Chen in the 2nd round of the Men's Singles by 4 games to 1 - 5-11, 12-14, 2-11, 11-8, 10-12. The match was a bit closer than it looks with Sharath putting up good resistance against Chen in the 2nd, 4th and 5th games - the second especially was within Sharath's grasp as he led 9-6, but his error count and an excellent defensive display by Chen got the better of him. Chen is ranked 42 places above Sharath in the World rankings at 37th place and it would have been a real upset if Sharath would have won this match.

Also losing today was the other Indian boxing hope Jitender Kumar 15:11 against Georgy Balakshin of Russia. After two fairly even opening rounds in which the two Flyweights were standing toe-to-toe in the middle of ring slugging it out, Balakshin exploded in the 3rd winning it 6:2 and effectively sealing the tie. Jitender tried valiantly to mount a comeback in the 4th, but could only manage a 3:2 reversal, not enough to undo the damage of round 3.