Khasanov's sob story

Boxing

Cuba provided the blood, Tajikistan the tears and a Canadian Hercules the sweat at the boxing tournament.

The tears flowed freely when the Tajik bantamweight Khurshed Khasanov outclassed the Nigerian Kahinde Aweda and then watched the referee raise his opponent's hand in triumph. Aweda leapt around the ring in jubilation, but after frantic signalling from the ringside officials, the two fighters were summoned back and Khasanov's hand raised instead

"I felt just terrible," Khasanov said. "I started to cry. It was the first time that I saw something like this happen after I was winning all along."

The Cuban welterweight Juan Hernandez, silver medallist at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, stopped Hungary's Jazcef Nagy after 1min 48sec of the second round. The Hungarian left with a bloody nose.

The Canadian welterweight Hercules Kyvelos laboured hard against the Tunisian Kamel Chater and went out on the slimmest of points decisions protesting that he had been robbed.

"I think I won," he said after drawing 4-4 on the computerised scoring and losing 35-21 on the tie-break calculation.