KZBlog

Back to the 2008 Olympic Games and in the couple of days I skipped, Kazakhstan picked up 2 silver and 1 bronze medals. In total Kazakhstan now has: 2 silver in weightlifting and 1 bronze; 2 bronze in wrestling and 1 silver in judo.

• Just last night, Mariya Grabovetskaya took the bronze in weightlifting, 75+ kilograms. If a bronze sounds weak, the gold-medal finisher, Jang Mi-ran of Korea broke the world record in the snatch event then lifted more to break it again. In the clean and jerk section, with her first lift of 175kg (22 kg more than the last successful lift) she won the gold. With her second lift, she broke the world record and then broke it again. Her total of 362kg is also a world record!

  Grabovetskaya is 21 years old. She took the silver medal at the 2007 Junior World Championships and the gold medal at the 2005 Asian Weightlifting Championships.

• Weightlifting appears to be Kazakhstan’s strongest sport so far in the 2008 Beijing Games, at least until boxing goes into the gold medal rounds. Alla Vazhenina of Kazakhstan lifted a total of 266kg in the 75kg weight class. That was good enough for a silver. China’s Cao Lei lifted 282kg for the gold. Lei was a favorite having won the Asian Championship this year and the Asian and World Championships in 2007.

  Vazhenina took the silver in the Asian Championships this year with the same weight of 266kg. She is 25 years old

• In the good news from Mongolia, pretty good news for Kazakhstan category, Ashkhat Zhitkeyev took the silver medal in 100-kilogram men’s judo. Zhitkeyev is 17 years old but already has a string of championships behind him, including a bronze at the 2001 World Championships in Munich. The good news is that his victor, Mongolia’s Tuvshinbayar Naidan, has won Mogolia’s first Olympic gold medal ever. Go Mongolia!
• In boxing, Bakhityar Artayev beat the supposedly “unbeatable” Matvey Korobov of Russia 10-7 to advance to the quarterfinals of the Middleweight (75kg) category. Next he faces James Degale from Great Britain. Artayev won the gold in 2004 in Athens, but many felt that Korobov, world champion in 2007 and 2005, and this year’s winner of the Feliks Sztamm.
• Birzhan Zhakypov also moves on to the quarterfinals in the light-flyweight category, having beaten Armenia’s Hovhannes Danielyan 130-7.
• However some bad news from the Flyweight (51kg) category. Mirat Sarsembayev lost 12-4 to Russia’s Georgy Balakshin.
• In freestyle wrestling, 48 kg weight class,Tatyana Bakatyuk lost in the bronze-medal match to Mariya Stadnik of Azerbaijan 2-1, 8-0. Canadian Carol Huynh previously beat Bakatyuk to make the finals.
• And Kazakhstan won its first volleyball game to Algeria. However, given that both teams have been on a continuous losing streak since the Olympics began, neither team will move on to the quarterfinals. But at least Kazakhstan’s volleyball team walked away from their first Olympics with one victory.

The matches to watch tonight if you support Team Kazakhstan are all in boxing: Serik Sapiyev goes up against Manus Boonjumnong of Thailand in the quaterfinals of the light welterweight (64kg). Anyone who has seen Boonjumnong, who beat Japan’s Masatsugu Kawachi, #3 in the world after the 2007 Championships, knows that the tall and gangly Thai has an unusual fighting style. He uses his longer reach well, jumping around the ring and denying his opponents a chance to touch him. On top of that he constantly smiles and bows, even while going on the offensive. I hope Sapiyev can keep his cool and not let these psychological tactics drive him to make mistakes. Kawachi, for his part, was paralyzed because he had no idea what to do against the bouncy, cunning Thai.

At 20:30 tonight, Beijing time, Bakhyt Sarsekbayev will fight Uzbekistan’s Dilshod Mahmudov to see who goes into the final four boxers in the welterweight category (69kg). Sarsekbayev looks like the favorite having won the Asian Championships in 2007 and 2005, and the Strandja Memorial in 2006. He also came in third in the Ahmet Comert of 2007. While Mahmudov has some championships under his belt, they are all from 2005-2006 and they are in the light welterweight category. He apparently finished in 33rd place in the 2007 World Championships in Chicago, although bizarrely, the official Beijing Olympics site shows that Boonjumnong also took 33rd in the light welterweight in Chicago! If anyone knows what happened here, please let me know.

Interestingly enough, both the Kazakh and Uzbek boxers were born exactly 1 year and 1 day apart. Sarsekbayev was born Nov. 29th 1981 and the Uzbek boxer was born Nov. 30th 1982.

The winner of the match will face the winner of the match between Demetrius Andrade of the US and Korea’s Jungjoo Kim.