Petecio made sure there would be no hometown decision with a convincing win over France’s Amina Zidani.
Nesthy Petecio silenced the home crowd at the Paris North Arena after defeating local bet Amina Zidani via a 4-1 split decision in their Paris 2024 Olympics women’s 57kg division round of 16 boxing clash early Saturday morning.
Scores were 30-27 and 29-28 three times for Petecio, while one judge had it 29-28 for third seed Zidani, a bronze medalist at the 2023 World Championships and gold medalist at the European Games who had the vocal support of the local fans.
Petecio started out rather cautiously in the first round, allowing Zidani to be the aggressor at times. The reticent approach resulted in Zidani taking the first round 3-2. But Petecio, silver medalist in Tokyo, came out firing on all cylinders in the second round and even appeared to have scored a clean knockdown off a left hand that sent Zidani down. However, the referee ruled it a slip. It didn’t matter at the end of the round, though, as Petecio swept all five judges’ scorecards to take a slim lead heading into the last round.
With the bout still up for grabs, both fighters went for broke in round 3. But it was Petecio who displayed better movement and more effective punching to win the nod of three of the judges at the end of the round. Zidani expressed shock and the crowd went silent when the decision was announced.
Petecio is now just a win away from another Olympic medal, and she’ll have to go through China’s Xu Zichun in the quarterfinals on Sunday night, Manila time. She joins two other Filipino boxers in the quarterfinals, with Carlo Paalam and Aira Villegas fighting within hours of each other on Saturday night through early Sunday morning.
Banner image from AFP.
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