David Price books place in semi's.

[TommyGunn]

Nine months after a broken hand ruled him out of a world championship quarter-final clash against Roberto Cammarelle, Liverpool super-heavyweight David Price is on collision course with Italy’s world champion after thundering into the Olympic semi-finals at Beijing Workers Gymnasium.


Having made a superb start in his quarter-final against Lithuania’s Jaroslav Jaksto, the 6ft 8in Price was awarded victory when his opponent pulled out before the start of the second claiming a back spasm. The British team captain is now guaranteed a bronze.

The unsatisfactory ending deprived Price, 25, of another spectacular finish as Jaksto was already trailing 3-1 having felt the full force of the British team captain’s left jab which must be like being hit in the face with a scaffolding pole.

And he is now looking forward to Friday’s clash with Cammarelle who himself got through with an unspectacular, but effective, 9-5 display against Colombian Oscar Rivas.

He is generally regarded as somewhat fortunate to have won the world crown in Chicago following the withdrawal of Russia’s Islam Timurziev and will no doubt feel he has a point to prove.

“It’s a great feeling although a bit of an anti-climax with the way it ended,” Price said afterwards. “There was a lot of pressure because my family are over and I wanted to give em’ an excuse to go out for a bevvy or two.

“Every time I hit him I knew I’d sickened him. This Lithuanian has been a thorn in my side ever since he beat me in Germany when I was 20, so this win means a lot to me.

“Breaking my hand in Chicago and being unable to fight Cammarelle was one of the lowpoints of my career. We always knew we’d meet him somewhere down the line at the Olympics and now it’s going to happen.”

And Price, who had reached the quarters with a stunning second-round stoppage of world No 1 Timurziev, says Friday cannot come soon enough. “I’ve beaten one of the favourites here and hopefully I can beat another,” he said.

“Getting a bronze isn’t just good for me, it’s good for the team because we’ve worked so hard. Thankfully we’ve got one medal in the bank now and hopefully two more will follow.

In the next 48 hours the two other British survivors - light-heavy Tony Jeffries and middleweight James DeGale will attempt to join Price in the semi-finals.

Tomorrow, Jeffries faces Hungary’s Imre Szello - who he has already defeated twice - while DeGale meets Bakhtiyar Artayev, Kazakhstan’s 2004 Olympic welterweight champion, on Wednesday.

The last of Britain’s eight boxers to qualify for the Olympics, Price had a desperate struggle reaching Beijing. His world championship campaign was truncated by that hand injury and in an Olympic qualifier he dropped a highly contentious decision to an Azerbajani who was later found to be Russian.

The result was declared a no-contest forcing Price, 25, to travel to another qualifier in Athens where he belatedly booked his Olympic place.

Another super-heavy to make a sizable impression was China’s Zhilei Zhang who continued his seemingly inexorable march towards the final with a comprehensive 12-2 triumph against Kazakhstan’s Ruslan Myrsatayev.

Showing good skills and movement for such a big man, Zhang utilised his height and reach most effectively before downing his opponent with a sweet left-right combination in round two and again with a sweeping right hook in round four.

Zhang now meets Vyacheslav Glazkov after the Ukrainian booked his passage to the last four with a lop-sided 10-4 victory over Newfel Ouatah of Algeria.