“Harney ka dum rakhna chahiye,” Akhil Kumar said after his unanticipated loss in the bantamweight quarter-finals on Monday night. “Aakhir main boxer hoon.” (I should have the stomach for a defeat. After all I am a boxer).

Straight from a defeat to Veaceslav Gojan of Moldova, Kumar rushed out to talk to reporters. Fresh from the heat of a bout, he did not know how the match was lost. But he struggled to prepare himself to accept that his Olympic dream was over, that he had in the end not crossed that thin line that separates victory and a jolly good effort.

So, he said, there are no regrets. Victory is victory, defeat is defeat, he said. I have treasured my wins, I know this is a defeat. But I tried.

Boxing bouts are over within 11 minutes of having begun. A drift in the direction of scoring, and one boxer could run away with the momentum. Once a pair of boxers have finished their match, it does not take long for the next pair to be ushered in. The spectators too move on. The winner clearly has little care to dwell too long on what happened before. The loser is left wondering what he could have done to change the tide.

Kumar lost his four-round bout 10:3. It began evenly enough, with the first two rounds evenly poised on the scoreboard, 1:1 in each. But the score belied the desperation that had already begun creeping into Akhil’s actions after the Moldovan maintained a cautious, defensive, shell-guard strategy, giving Akhil little purchase with his initial offence.

... contd.