Doha: India's Sanjay Kolte advanced into the quarter finals of the Asian Games boxing competition when he stopped his Macau rival Sou Weng Meng in the second round of their preliminary round light flyweight (48 kg) bout at the Asian Games yesterday (Dec 4, 2006).

Kolte had taken a huge 16-0 lead in the opening round and the bout was stopped soon into the second round by Chinese referee Li Qingsheng to save his opponent from further punishment. He will meet Zou Shiming of China for a place in the semi finals on Dec 8.

But two other Indian boxers bit the dust.

Akhil Kumar and Jai Bhagwan were knocked out by much superior opponents from the ertswhile Soviet Union in their preliminary round bouts.

Kumar was stopped inside the distance by strong Uzbeikstan fighter Orzubeh Shayinmov when the referee stopped the one-sided bantamweight (54 kg) contest at 1 minute, 46 seconds into round three of the round of 16 bout.

The victory enabled the Uzbek competitor to reach the last eight.

Later Jai Bhagwan went down after putting up a brave fight against his Kyrgistan rival Asylbek Talasbaev on points (33-22) in their lightweight (60kg) class preliminary round contest.

Bhagwan started off well and was down 7-10 in the opening round, but lost ground in the second as his rival widened the lead to 20-12. The third and fourth rounds were much closer, but by then Talasbaev had taken a sizeable leeway which the Indian pugilist could not bridge.