By IANS
Chicago : Three Indian pugilists — Dilbag Singh, Jitender Kumar and Jai Bhagwan — won their opening bouts on the third day of the World Boxing Championships here.
Athresh Lali Lakra (featherweight) and Vijender Singh (middleweight) had won their preliminary bouts Wednesday, making it a total of five out of eight Indians still in action.
Jitender, a Commonwealth Games bronze medallist at Melbourne, defeated Moldovian Igori Samoilenco 20-14 in the flyweight (51kg) category preliminary round at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Pavilion Thursday evening.
Dilbag outboxed Lithuania’s Roman Skerlo 13-5 in the welterweight (69kg) category while Jai Bhagwan thrashed Velertino Knowles of the Bahamas 35-12 in the lightweight (60kg) section.
Jai Bhagwan next meets Georgia’s Vasil Qazishvili, who outpointed South African Owethu Mbira.
Dilbag faces Serbia’s Zoran Mitrovic, 17-12 winner against Englishman Neil Perkins, while Jitender runs into German Ronny Beblik, who scraped past Colombia’s William Urina Serna 16-13.
There was, however, some disappointment in store for the Indian squad as Jasveer Singh and Balbir Singh both bowed out of the competition.
Jasveer had no chance against Chinese Zhang Xiao Ping and went down haplessly 3-17 in the light heavyweight (81kg) category while Balbir lost 11-27 to Birzham Zhakypov of Kazakhstan in the light flyweight (48kg) class.
Quarter-finalists in all 11 weight categories automatically qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.