Double success for British girls in the ring

After Great Britain’s mixed start yesterday, all eyes were on the women, and middleweight Marshall and light-welterweight Jonas looked particularly impressive.

Marshall was a commanding 23-11 winner against Australia’s Naomi Fischer-Rasmussen in the 75kg category, leading 5-3 after the first round before going through her repertoire in the second to go 10-4 up.

The Hartlepool boxer forced Fischer-Rasmussen to take a standing count in the third as her power took hold before running out an easy points winner.

Jonas was similarly impressive at 60kg as she won 23-15 against American Quanitta Underwood.

Team-mate Nina Smith could not make it three out of three, however, as she missed out on a semi-final place in a 19-5 loss to Russian Olesya Gladkova in the 51kg category.

In men’s action, Repton’s Martin Ward edged Samat Bashenov of Kazakhstan 14-13.

Ward enjoyed early success with the left hook to go 5-2 up before Bashenov launched a fightback to leave Ward just 9-8 up heading into the final session.

However, Ward kept his composure to eke out the victory and progress to the semis.

lLondon 2012 have been urged to cancel Dow Chemical’s sponsorship of the Olympic Stadium ‘wrap’ after it emerged the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) will vote on a possible boycott of the Games. VK Malhotra, acting president of the IOA, said the board would vote on the issue at a meeting on 5 December following a petition of current and former athletes.

Dow, which is sponsoring the ‘wrap’ around the stadium, owns Union Carbide, the company that was responsible for the Bhopal chemical disaster in 1984. London 2012 said they had had “absolutely no indication” from Indian Olympic officials about any such discussions.

Malhotra said: “Many Olympic athletes have expressed concern about it and they are upset that Dow is sponsoring the London Olympics and they want to boycott.”