Japan’s Sena Irie has won the women’s featherweight boxing gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics on August 3. Japan has only ever won three gold medals in Olympic boxing. The first was won by Takao Sakurai during the 1964 Tokyo Games, while the second belongs to Ryota Murata, the middleweight boxing champion in the London 2012 Olympics. This means that 20-year-old Irie is the first Japanese woman to have ever won a gold medal in the sport.
In the final match that took place on August 3, Irie was competing against Nesthy Petecio of the Philippines, a gold medalist in the 2019 World Boxing Championships. Though the boxers were tied after the first six minutes, Irie fought her way through the final round, with all five judges scoring in her favour with a sweeping mark of 5-0.
Keep up-to-date with our guide to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics as well as our Tokyo 2020 Olympics medal tally for Japan.
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