It should have been a perfect day for Cuba as its gifted boxers showed up in three out of five finals Saturday in Athens, except Manus Boonjumnong from Thailand stole its thunder in the light welterweight championship bout.

The 24-year-old Thai, a bronze medalist in last year's World Championships in Bangkok, defeated Yudel Johnson Cedeno of Cuba 17-11 to take the gold of 64kg category in the Athens Olympic boxing tournament.

Boonjumnong punched sharper to open a 6-2 lead in the first round, gave in 4-3 in the second but kept scoring 5-4 and 3-1 in the last two round respectively.

Johnson Cedeno started slowly, and never looked comfortable against Boonjumnong. The more the frustrated Cuban southpaw tried to catch the Thai in the final round, the more the evasive the Thai danced away out of reach.

Yuriorkis Camboa Toledano has won the first boxing gold for Cuba in Athens as he overcame former world champion Jerome Thomas of France 38-23 in the flyweight (51kg) final.

Twice world champion Odlanier Solis Fonte then added a second to the Caribbean amateur boxing powerhouse in the heavyweight (91kg) division.

Other two gold medals went to Russians as Alexei Tichtchenko and Gaydarbek Gaydarbekov won respectively in the featherweight (57kg) and middleweight (75kg) finals.

Tichtchenko outclassed Kim Song Guk of DPR Korea 39-17 as the 20-year-old took an unassailable lead in the first round and was never troubled by Kim.

Gaydarbekov, the Sydney Olympics silver medallist and European champion, upset world champion Gennady Golovkin of Kazakhstan winning by 28 points to 18.

The Athens Olympics boxing tournament, featuring eleven categories and slatted from August 14-29 in the Peristeri Olympic Boxing Hall, will decide its last six gold medals Sunday afternoon.

The 24-year-old Solis claimed the heavyweight gold with a convincing 22-13 victory over Viktar Zuyev of Belarus, who stalked the Cuban from the opening bell and led by one point after the opening round.

But from then on the Cuban began to find his range, using his reach advantage and footwork to pick off Zuyev with his right jab.

Solis, who has won the World Championships twice in 2003 and 2001, went into the Olympic campaign with a huge responsibility, as he is considered the successor to fellow Cuban legend Felix Savon, the six-time world champion and tree-time Olympic gold medalist who retired after winning in Sydney.

"I have trained for this for four years and worked with Felix Savon, who won three Olympic Games gold medals, and I wanted to follow in his footsteps," said Solis.

Cuban fighters have won 27 Olympic golds since 1972, out of which Savon and Teofilo Stevenson had contributed three each.

Solis is wildly expected to follow them as he has declared to fight as an amateur and reach the goal of three Olympic gold medals.

"That is very hard to achieve," he said after Saturday's final."It will take a lot of discipline and training for many years to do this."

Zuyev, the Worlds bronze medalist, should be satisfied with a silver, which is the first ever Olympic Games medal for Belarus inthe heavyweight class.

"The Cubans have dominated the division, but we will try hard to dethrone them," said Zuyev.

Source: Xinhua