Welterweight (≤69 kilograms), Men

Oleg Saitov, having already been champion at both Atlanta and Sydney, aimed to join the elite band of three-time Olympic boxing champions with victory in Athens. After a relatively lean period following the 2000 Games he had re-established his reputation by claiming his second European title earlier in 2004. However Saitov was not the favourite for the title – that honour went to [Lorenzo Aragon], the Cuban who had won both World Championships since the last Olympics. The anticipated face-off between Saitov and Aragon never materialized as the Russian’s run of wins was snapped in his 13th Olympic bout. Saitov’s unlikely conqueror was the unheralded 21 year old Kazakh Bakhtiyar Artayev who had only qualified for Athens after winning the last chance Asian qualifying tournament. Artayev’s task appeared even more insurmountable against Aragon in the final but the underdog rallied after losing the first round and gradually took control of the fight. By the end of the four rounds the Kazakh held a ten point lead and had broken the winning streak of the Cuban which went back 18 months. Artayev’s outstanding performances in the semi-final and final earned him the Val Barker Trophy for the most stylish boxer of the competition. Although he boxed for another eight years at the top international level and won medals at World and Asian championships he never again quite reached the same level of performance at he showed in 2004 and was eliminated at the quarter-final stage in Beijing.