Olympic champ Irie retires with gold in Japan national tourney

Tokyo Olympics champion Sena Irie fittingly ended her short but sweet boxing career by grabbing a gold medal in the recently concluded Japanese Women’s National Championships 2022.

The Japanese girls impressed at the Tokyo Olympic Games where Sena Irie earned gold and Tsukimi Namiki bronze. Their top female boxers won several medals at the ASBC Asian Elite Boxing Championships in Amman last month and all of them were ready to fight again excluding the new champion Rinka Kinoshita, Mai Kito and Hikaru Kato.

The 22-year-old Irie went all out against fellow national team member and Tokyo-based boxer Satsuki Yoshizawa for a lopsided 5-0 victory in the featherweight (57kg) division.

Irie became the first Japanese woman boxer to win an Olympic gold after reigning supreme in the same weight class last year. She then snared a silver in the ASBC Asian Elite Championships 2022 in Amman, Jordan last month.

The Nippon Sport Science University student previously talked about her early retirement to focus on her plan of studying amphibians particularly frogs at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology.

Meanwhile, Olympic bronze medalist Tsukimi Namiki of Saitama dominated former Asian youth champion Hikaru Shinohara of Tokyo, 5-0, to rule the light flyweight (50kg) category.

Two-time world bronze winner Madoka Wada of Nara waylaid Kokoa Taguchi of Tokyo, 5-0, to stay atop the minimumweight (48kg) division.

Tokyo’s Arisa Kishimoto (fly-52kg) and Saitama’s Misaki Horiuchi (bantam-54kg), Ayaka Taguchi (light-60kg) and Minami Takahashi (light welter-63kg) also emerged victorious in the national championships where 38 bouts took place.

The list of the winners at the Japanese Women’s National Championships

 48kg: Madoka Wada

 50kg: Tsukimi Namiki

 52kg: Arisa Kishimoto

 54kg: Misaki Horiuchi

 57kg: Sena Irie

 60kg: Ayaka Taguchi

 63kg: Minami Takahashi

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