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| Hours after Carlos Yulo scored a gymnastics gold, Aira Villegas assured herself that she is not going home empty-handed too. Reuters (file photo) |
MANILA--For the second straight season, the Philippines will go home with multiple medals in the Summer Olympics.
Aira Villegas assured herself of a medal in the women's flyweight boxing event after stunning host country France's Wassila Lkhadiri in a tight quarterfinal battle early Sunday (Philippine Time) at the Paris North Arena in Villepinte.
Villegas exerted enough effort to sway the judges she needed to convince that she was better than Lkhadiri en route to a razor-thin split decision win.
Round 1 already showed glimpses that it could go down the wire with both fighters playing their game plan pretty well.
Three judges gave the opening salvo to Villegas.
Lkhadiri fought back in Round 2 with a better adjustment to her strategy, swinging two judges who gave Round 1 to Villegas and once again impressing judge Babak Bordbar to give her the 20-18 lead.
Jakob Peterson, the other judge who gave Round 1 to Villegas, still had her winning Round 2 for a 20-18 lead, while Manuel Vilarino, who gave Round 1 to Lkhadiri, also gave Round 2 to Villegas, now tallying the bout 19-all after two, setting up a very crucial Round 3 with three 19-all cards to sway.
Despite a solid finish by Villegas, the majority of the jury gave Lkhadiri Round 3, but those were Peterson, who already had Villegas winning, Bordbar, who had the only perfect 30 in his scorecard favoring Lkhadiri, and Muhammad Pohan, one of three judges with 19-all cards entering the final frame.
However, both Vilarino and Pavel Pavlov, the other judge with a 19-all card after Round 2, gave Round 3 to Villegas, which turned out to be enough for her to secure the tight 3-2 split win.
Now assured of at least a bronze hours after Carlos Yulo got the Filipinos to the medal board with his floor exercise gold, Villegas can upgrade her medal to an assured silver if she beats Turkiye's Buse Naz Cakiroglu in the semifinals early Wednesday (Philippine Time) as action shifts to the iconic Roland Garros Stadium in downtown Paris.
Unlike Villegas, Cakiroglu entered the semifinals smoothly with a unanimous decision win against Finland's Pihla Kaivo-Oja that saw all judges scoring perfect 30s to Cakiroglu and two of them even giving a 10-8 to Cakiroglu in Round 3.
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