The Portuguese fighter Rita Soares told Lusa on Wednesday that she was “very happy” to win the -50 kg quarterfinals of the Krakow 2023 European Games, being “nine minutes” away from qualifying for Paris 2024 in boxing.
“I am very happy, I have no words to describe the happiness I am feeling. I am literally one fight, three ’rounds’ and nine minutes away from getting a passport for Paris 2024. It is my biggest dream. It is not only from my job, but of a whole technical team, fans and family”, the 31-year-old boxer told Lusa.
The fighter from the Privilégio Boxing Club faces today Laura Fuertes Fernández, the first Spaniard to win a medal at the Boxing World Cup, in 2022, and a bronze at the Mediterranean Games in Oran 2022, in a fight that she knows is “very difficult, but that is within the reach” “of your fists.
It takes two and a half hours from Lisbon to Paris on a direct flight, but Rita Soares insists on stamping her “passport” for the Olympic Games, next summer, in nine minutes.
“I have this motivation, for now, to go to the Games, and she had a very difficult and balanced fight today.
Even so, alert, he lost both fights with the young woman born in 1999, although now he can play “with the injury he has” and the accumulated fatigue of a more exhausting fight.
“I feel very good physically and she is an athlete that I have never been able to beat. She may even be technically superior, but I’m motivated, ”she insists.
Before, in the quarterfinals, she knocked out the Azeri Anakhanim Ismayilova after managing to disqualify her, with three penalties from the referee for blocking the fight, and left an athlete with a presence in the Olympic, World and European Games, and on top of that “a canhota”, more difficult to counter with the orthodox guard, which Soares employs.
That experience, against a “very technical, fast and strong” athlete, was that of a victory “in intelligence and pressure”, applying a short distance game to create difficulties for the rival, who resorted to grabbing her to block.
Now, between you and Paris2024, she is a Spanish pioneer in her country with a sore nose and the ‘hunger’ to end a Portuguese fast that has lasted since Moscow 1980, when João Manuel Miguel was the first -and so far only- Portuguese representative. At the olympic games.
Portugal currently has 13 podium finishes at Krakow 2023, namely three golds, seven silvers and three bronzes.
The third edition of the European Games takes place until Sunday in Krakow and in the Polish region of Malopolska, with 30 sports on the program and 48 participating countries, including Portugal, which has a delegation of more than two hundred athletes.
Source: TSF
