Charismatic Moroccan world and Africa heavyweight champion Khadija Mardi today, July 31, takes on Britain’s Chantelle Reid in the round of 16 middleweight class in Day 5 of Paris Olympic Games boxing tournament.The heavyweight class in Paris has 16 boxers.
Mardi has been forced to shed off some kilograms to make it to the 75kg category because there’s no women’s heavyweight berth in the Olympics.
She leads Africa’s elusive campaign for gold in the Paris Olympics. The last time Africa won gold was at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics through Algeria’s late lightweight Hocine Soltani who also won bronze at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics at featherweight.
With the world gold medal under her belt, Mardi is one of the red-hot favourites for the middleweight crown in Paris.
A gold medal will be a fitting climax to her illustrious career.
In Africa, Mardi has no opposition having flattened all opponents some of whom have now become her regular customers.
Mardi won African Games gold in 2019 and 2023, and in the Africa Elite Championships she won gold in 2022 and 2023.
At the big stage, in addition to her world title she clinched in New Delhi last year, Mardi won bronze and silver at the 2019 and 2022 world championships respectively.
The Moroccan darling of women’s boxing made her Olympic debut in 2016 in Rio, losing in the quarter-finals to Kazakhstan’s 2015 Female Boxer of the Year, Dariga Shakimova who settled for bronze in Rio.
Mardi’s opponent, Chantelle Reid, is the current England national middleweight champion.
She’s making a comeback to big-time boxing after being out for six years due to a back injury. She won gold in the 2014 European Junior Championships and and bronze in the 2015 World Youth Championships.
The England boxer earned her Paris ticket through a points win over tough Kazakhstan’s Aziza Zokhirova in the first world qualifiers in Busto Arsizio in Italy.
Victory for Mardi will see her advance to the quarter-finals to take on either New Delhi world championships silver medallist Catlin Parker of Australia or Mexico’s Pan American Games bronze medallist Citlalli Ortiz.
Among other top boxers in the middleweight class include India’s reigning world champion Lovlina Borgohain, Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Li Qian of China who’s the top seed, second-seeded Ireland’s three-time European champion Aolfe O’Rourke and Commonwealth Games champion, Canada’s Tammara Thibeault who won gold in the 2022 worlds.
The other two African boxers in the round of 16 action today are Mozambican star boxer Tiago Muxanga and Egypt’s Omar Elawady, both in the light-middleweight class.
Muxanga meets Mexico’s Marco Alonso and Elawady has a hard to crack against reigning world champion, Uzbekistan’s Asadkhuja Muydinkhujaeva.
Credit: AFBC Communications
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