Boxer Ashish Kumar Chaudhary suffered an opening round loss to China‘s Erbieke Touheta in the middleweight category (69-75kg) on Monday. The 27-year-old Olympic debutant made an underwhelming start to his bout, and was too late to respond as he went down 0-5. 

The former Asian Games silver-medallist was caught on the back-foot in the opening round and lost it unanimously to the busy Chinese, who used his jab to good effect.

The boxer from Himachal Pradesh raised his game in the second round to give a better account of himself with more attacks but the Chinese excelled in dodging him on most occasions, claiming this one unanimously too.

Touheta’s combination punches also connected better.

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Ashish went all out in the final three minutes and managed to trouble Touheta despite a cut beneath his left eye.

The judges also scored unanimously in his favour but the Chinese had the decisive lead which gave him the victory.

Touheta will next face Brazil‘s third-seeded Herbert Sousa, who is a world championships bronze-medallist.

Ashish is the third Indian boxer to bow out of the mega-event after Vikas Krishan (69kg) and Manish Kaushik (63kg) also exited with opening-round losses.

Indian athletes had another disappointing day in Tokyo on today. CA Bhavani Devi, the first-ever Indian Olympic fencer crashed out of thy Games after a 15-3 loss to France’s world number three Manon Brunet. 

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Later, the archery men’s team, which won the silver in the 2019 World Championships, started with plenty of promise, downing Kazakhstan 6-2 in the opening round but were beaten 6-0 by South Korea. 

Indian men’s badminton doubles team of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty lost to the Indonesian pair of Marcus Gideon and Kevin Sukamuljo in a badminton Group A match. While star Table Tennis player Manika Batra also lost in straight sets to Austria’s Sofia Polkanova.