US boxer Claressa Shields became a two-time gold medalist, taking a 3-0 decision over Nouchka Fontijn of the Netherlands in the middleweight final in Rio earlier today. She said she wanted to prove her championship was no fluke in the first year that women’s boxing was contested in the Olympics. In recognition of her dominance, Shields was awarded the Val Barker Trophy as the most outstanding boxer at the 2016 Olympic Games. Not anybody can be an Olympic gold medalist period but to be able to say I’m a two-time Olympic gold medalist.
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“Now I want to box too, because I’ve see every single one of her fights, and its just incredible”, Austin said, “she’s never quit, she’s never given up”. She was the star of the London Games and again was the class of her division.
Reigning Olympic champion Claressa Shields (Flint, Mich.) is familiar with history making performances and she put on another one in her second gold medal bout on Sunday in Rio de Janeiro.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do”. And when I got just a little bit of hope, look how far I’ve come.
Shields knew long before the result was confirmed, and the winner’s hand raised by the Vietnamese referee, that the gold was hers. With five medal wins on Sunday’s final day of the Games – gold from the men’s basketball team, boxer Claressa Shields and freestyle wrestler Kyle Snyder, and bronze from marathoner Galen Rupp and the men’s volleyball team – the United States finished with 46 gold medals and 121 medals overall.
Shields only had to avoid trouble in the fourth and final round – and did that comfortably to retain her title, sparking attempts at a cartwheel and then her ecstatic foray around the ring. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her other gold medal, the one she won in London at the 2012 Games.
“If feels so, so good, and its because she deserves it, she fought for it”.
Climbing out of the ring after the announcement, she ran around the arena with the USA flag held aloft before wrapping it around her.
Yoka, who said he would turn pro, laughed when asked if Mossely offered pre-fight advice: “She asked me to win”.
Numerous other medal winners from Rio, a competition overshadowed by a judging furor despite a change in the system, will doubtless re-emerge in the pro ranks – and possibly return now that the Games are open to paid fighters. I don’t see where he went wrong.
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“I worked so hard to be here”, she said. And she said there’s a lesson in all that. “I want to be boxer like her”, she said, “I play basketball now but I think I want to try boxing”. “She is a role model for me and not just a role model for Flint, but for so many young women here in the city”. Who knows if I’ll be here in 2020?
