CWG 2018 | Thought I had won gold medal, says boxer Satish Yadav

CWG 2018 | Thought I had won gold medal, says boxer Satish Yadav

no photo

Indian pugilist Satish Yadav, who managed to win silver in the men’s 91 kg boxing CWG event, had thought that he struck gold after the close bout against his English counterpart Frazer Clarke. The judges, however, gave Clarke a unanimous 5:0 victory after the boxers looked on par with each other.

India completed a stunning outing at the recently concluded 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth games where the nation put up a strong performance in various events. Indian ended the tournament at the third position in the overall medals tally list behind runners-up England and hosts’ and winners, Australia. India had the boxing department, in particular, to thank for where Mary Kom, Vikas Krishan and Gaurav Solanki won gold in their respective categories.

Amit, Satish Yadav and Manish Kumar secured silver while the likes of Manoj Kumar, Naman Tanwar and Mohammed won Bronze to take the total medal count of boxers to nine medals. However, 91 kg boxing category silver medalist Satish Yadav has claimed that he deserved the gold rather than silver after the close fight against British opponent, Frazer Clarke. The judges had awarded Clarke a 5:0 victory over Yadav in that bout, which took the crowd by surprise as both boxers seemed to be equally matched.

“I gave it my 100 percent, but I still couldn’t win gold. Even the coaches had expected that I’d win, and the crowd was shouting 'the red one (his outfit’s colour) is the winner'. But it turned out differently. The decision was incorrect only in the last bout. We couldn’t contest the judges’ decision because though protests was allowed earlier, the rule was changed a few years ago,” Yadav told TOI.

Yadav, who has a job with the Indian army, has chosen to let go of his CWG disappointment and would focus on the upcoming Asian Games that will is scheduled in Jakarta later this year and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. On another note, the syringe controversy created quite a bit of negative publicity for the Indian contingent but Yadav claimed that the doctor for the boxing team was unaware of the tournament’s no-needle policy.

“The allegations that syringes were found from boxers’ rooms proved to be false. All the Indian boxers underwent a dope test and got a clean chit. So, there was nothing to worry about when we had not done anything wrong,” he said.

Get updates! Follow us on

Open all