(OCT 21) Saturday saw the finals of the
6th Women Amateur Championships. 137 boxers from 27 countries
competed in 13 weight divisions, from 46 kgs (102 lbs) to 86 kgs
(190 lbs). A total of 124 bouts were fought to find the 13 new
European Champions.
Three countries - Russia, Turkey and Ukraine - had registered
competitors in all 13 weight divisions, while Ireland, Israel,
Italy, Lithuania, Switzerland and Wales pinned their hope for glory
and a medal at the championships on a single boxer. Russia
turned out to be the most dominant country by far. No less than 10
of their 13 boxers returned to Russia with a medal to show for their
efforts. 6 of gold, 1 of silver and 3 of bronze. No other country
won more than 1 gold medal.
The 2007 European Championships proved, that the quality of women's
amateur boxing is increasing, and that the competition is getting
tougher year by year. It was clearly evident, that the method of
scoring the bouts has undergone a radical change since last years
championships. Only clean and telling punches were counted. To
illustrate the point. At the 13 final bouts in 2006, a total of 320
points were awarded with 3 finals stopped by the outscore rule,
while at this years 13 finals, only 148 points were given, with 1
bout stopped by the outscore rule and two ending in knockouts. The
total number of bouts stopped by RSCO (Outscore by 15 points within
the two first rounds) at the 2006 championships were 40 against 8
this year. The stricter scoring caused some frustration by some
coaches, and there were even some corners throwing in the towel as a
protest, to what they regarded as unfair scoring. All in all, the
new principle of scoring made the bouts more entertaining to watch,
in my humble opinion.
The medal table for the 2007
Championship:
|
Country |
Gold |
Silver |
Bronze |
|
Russia |
6 |
1 |
3 |
|
Romania |
1 |
2 |
4 |
|
Ukraine |
1 |
1 |
4 |
|
Turkey |
1 |
0 |
5 |
|
Sweden |
1 |
2 |
0 |
|
France |
1 |
0 |
3 |
|
Hungary |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
Ireland |
1 |
0 |
0 |
|
Poland |
0 |
2 |
2 |
|
Denmark |
0 |
0 |
3 |
|
England |
0 |
1 |
0 |
|
Bulgaria |
0 |
1 |
0 |
|
Norway |
0 |
1 |
0 |
|
Switzerland |
0 |
1 |
0 |
|
Netherlands |
0 |
0 |
1 |
The results from the finals:
Link to PDF File
All results: preliminary, quarter finals and semi finals are linked
from this page:
Link
(WBAN has used a generic amateur
fight photo for this article, if anyone has photos of this event
contact WBAN to send them to us
so that we can post photos of the amateurs)
