Military World Games: Boxer Deepak enters final, race walker K T Irfan misses medal

Indian boxer Deepak entered the men's light flyweight finals but Olympian K T Irfan missed out on a bronze medal after finishing fourth in the 20km race walk event at the 7th CISM World Military Games here on Friday.

Deepak outboxed Azerbaijan's Alizada Salman 5-0 in the semifinal bout in an unanimous decision. He will face Kazakhstan's Zhussupov Temirtas in the 49kg finals on Saturday.

In men's bantam weight, Chirag (56kg), however, lost 1-4 to Mongolia's Kharkhuu Enkh Amar in the semifinals.

Earlier, Irfan clocked 1:25:09s to finish the race in fourth spot.

China's Xu Hao clinched the gold with a timing of 1:22:18s, while the silver and bronze medals went to Ukraine's Shumik Victor (1:23:18s) and Slovakia's Uradnik Miroslav (1:24:16s) respectively.

Irfan, who has a personal best as well as national record of 1:20:21s which he registered during his 10th place finish in 2012 London Olympics, has already qualified for next year's Tokyo Summer Games by finishing fourth in the 20 km event of the Asian Race Walking Championships in March.

The 29-year-old Irfan had clocked 1 hour 20 minutes and 57 seconds to better the Tokyo Olympics qualification standard of 1 hour 21 minutes.

Indian sprinter Jinson Johnson qualified for the men's 1500m finals with a timing of 3:56.17 in heat 2 of the preliminary round here.

Indian quartet of Jithu Baby, Harsh Kumar, Jabir Madari Palliyalil and Kunju Muhammed Puthanpurakk also made it to the men's 4x400m relay final after clocking 3:13.17 in the preliminary round on Friday.

In tennis, Sriram Balaji lost 3-6 4-6 to China's Zhang Zhi Zhen in the men's singles semifinals.