KZBlog

Kazakhstan’s boxers continue to lead the hope for a medal. While in other events, Kazakhstan’s athletes have already finished empty-handed, the boxers are still in the ring and pounding away. As I reported before, Bakhityar Aratayev is still in the final 16 and will have his next match on Aug 16 against Matvey Korobov, the Russian champion. In fact, except for featherweight Galib Zhafarov who lost to Azerbaijani Shahin Imranov early on, all the Kazakhstan boxers are in the final 16 and will fight this week to make the final 8!

In the welterweight category, Bakhyt Sarsekbayev will face Vitaly Grusac from Moldovia on the 14th of August. Kanat Abutalipov represents Kazakhstan in the bantamweight category. If he beats Yankiel Alarcon Leon of Cuba on the 15th, he will be in the final 8. In the light draw, Merey Akshalov goes against Hu Qing of China. Yerkebulan Shynaliyev faces Cuban Pureto Rican (thanks Antonio for your correction!) boxer Carlos Negron Colon on the 14th in the light-heavy category. Serik Sapiyev is going for the light welter medal. His next opponent will be Jonny Sanchez of Venezuela. And in the supper-heavy weight, Kazakhstan is rooting for Ruslan Myrsatayev who will face Dan Behan of Australia. Australian newspapers seem to be reporting that this is not a difficult draw for Behan, but any Kazakh boxer will have some surprises in store and won’t go down easily.

As for the women’s judo, Kazakhstan finished fourth at Beijing, with Sholpan Kaliyeva losing to Soraya Haddad of Algeria in the bronze medal match A. Haddad and bronze medal match B winner Nakamuta of Japan share the bronze. North Korean An Kum Ae took the silver and Xian Donhmei of China got the gold!

In the 60kg category of Greco-Roman wrestling Nurbakhyt Tengizbayev made it to the semi-finals, but was beaten by Azerbaijan’s Vitaliy Rahimov in a close match with a tie in the first set, the second set going to Vitaliy 7-0 and the last set of 0-0! Tengizbayev will face Ruslan Tiumenbaev of Kyrgyzstan for the bronze!

Furthermore, in the women’s trap shooting final, Elena Struchyeva finished 6th. And Inga Dudchenko is still in rowing, finishing 5th in the preliminaries and will go into the semi-finals of Group C and D.

And the official Beijing site had some good news for Kazakhstan in women’s weightlifting. While Russia’s Svetlana Tsarukaeva is the favorite, they say:

Only two lifters in the finals have a better entry total than Tsarukaeva. They are Irina Nekrassova and Maya Maneza of Kazakhstan with an entry total of 241kg each. Twenty-year-old Nekrassova ranked fourth in the 2006 Asian Championships after lifting 186kg. She competed in the 69kg class in the 2007 World Championships, finishing ninth. Maneza is the secret weapon of the Kazakhstan team. This will be her first major international competition.

Sadly, as I check the live results, Manzea did not start. If anyone knows what happened, please comment! But Nekrassova is in 2nd place by the results of the clean and jerk competition (130kg) In the snatch competition, she last lifted 100kg!

In related news, Irina Mikitenko who runs for Germany in the marathon event is out due to a foot injury. Kazakhstani will remember that she represented Kazakhstan in the 1996 Olympics under her maiden name, Volynskaya.

As usual, I welcome updates, corrections and comments!

And if you want to watch Irina Nekrassova’s updated live results on the currently underway weightlifting Click here. I think she’s in the running for a medal!