A diva in the ring. Irma Head she is world champion (57 kg category), conquers that gold medal that had escaped her last in the final in Istanbul against Yu Ting Lin from Taiwan. Kazakh Karina Ibragimovaa lefty to take with a grain of salt (it is no coincidence that the Taiwanese had bent in the semifinal) challenged her on her own field, that of technical ability, mobility in the ring, choice of tempo.
But in Delhi, however, Irma lived up to her alias, Butterfly. She danced, she used the left jab with the naturalness of a great man in the ring, she only released the right when she served, she even acted – like a diva -, taking care to report the hits to the jury. And the jury accepted by not making trouble. Five to zero net, even in the partials: 30-27 with the exception of the Serbian judge, who only saw a 29-28 for the blue. But that’s an insignificant detail.
“To win this title I sacrificed my whole adolescence, my whole life. But if these are the results, I would like to do it for another twenty years”. For Irma it is the umpteenth coronation. She is the first Italian at the Olympics, she is both to participate and to take a medal (bronze), she is the European champion, now the world champion. Only the top step of the podium is missing in Paris, and the doors of the boxing legend will definitely open for her. To get there, she, like the others, will have to face as a first useful appointment are the European Games in Krakow next June. Iba and Cio have been at loggerheads for some time and the world championships are not recognized as an Olympic qualification.
Sirine Chaarabi, a silver with a smile
Defeat in the final in the 52 kg Sirine Chaarabi, but the beautiful smile exhibited on the podium by the girl born in Tunisia and who became Italian after a path as desired as tormented, says a lot about her world championship. She lost to Wu, a Chinese less technically gifted and with a shorter reach, but much more experienced (28 to 23, in these contexts count). Wu brought Sirine into his swampy, grumpy but effective boxing. The blue tried to box in line but she succeeded in an acceptable way only in the first round.