{"id":27889,"date":"2016-08-20T03:40:49","date_gmt":"2016-08-20T03:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/rio-olympics-2016-lutalo-muhammad-suffers\/"},"modified":"2016-08-20T03:40:33","modified_gmt":"2016-08-20T03:40:33","slug":"rio-olympics-2016-lutalo-muhammad-suffers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/rio-olympics-2016-lutalo-muhammad-suffers\/","title":{"rendered":"Rio Olympics 2016: Lutalo Muhammad suffers agonising last-second taekwondo defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Great Britain’s Lutalo Muhammad suffered an agonising last-second defeat in the men’s -80kg taekwondo final – losing 8-6 to Cheick Sallah Cisse of the Ivory Coast.
\n}<\/p>\n

World number four Muhammad, 25, led 6-4 but was hit by a reverse turning kick with the last action of the final.<\/p>\n

GB were aiming for their second taekwondo gold of the Games after Jade Jones’ -57kg triumph on Friday.<\/p>\n

“I’m so distraught,” said a tearful Muhammad after his defeat.<\/p>\n

“I was so close to becoming Olympic champion and making my dream.<\/p>\n

“I don’t want to cry but I am so sorry to the people that stayed up to watch. I let them down at the last second. This is so hard.<\/p>\n

“I was so close to being Olympic champion. The emotions are so raw. It’s hard to say how disappointed I am. It should have been gold. I am so upset I can’t speak clearly.<\/p>\n

“I am absolutely gutted to blow it like that. I’ll have to wait four years for another chance. It’s one of the low points of my life.”<\/p>\n

Cisse won Ivory Coast’s first Olympic gold and just their third medal at any Games.<\/p>\n

They had not won a medal of any colour since an athletics silver in Los Angeles in 1984 – but in addition to Cisse’s victory, Ruth Marie Christelle Gbagbi also won a bronze in the women’s -57kg in Rio.<\/p>\n

Muhammad, a bronze medallist from London 2012, was patient at the start of his final before a kick to Cisse’s head towards the end of the first round gave him a 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n

Cisse responded with a kick of his own in the second round, and a high kick in round three to keep pace with Muhammad.<\/p>\n

In a tense final minute, Muhammad appeared to set to claim gold before the Ivorian snatched victory and charged around the arena in jubilation.<\/p>\n

Cook suffers shock defeat<\/p>\n

Earlier, Muhammad’s former GB team-mate Aaron Cook suffered a shock 14-2 loss to Wei-Ting Liu.<\/p>\n

Muhammad was controversially selected ahead of Cook for London 2012, with Cook electing to fight for Moldova in 2015.<\/p>\n

“I’m devastated,” Cook said. “I made the switch from GB after the devastation of missing London 2012 and not feeling I had a way back. Moldova gave me a chance and had such high hopes.”<\/p>\n

Cook’s hopes of making the repechage ended when Liu was beaten in the quarter-finals by eventual bronze medallist Oussama Oueslati of Tunisia.<\/p>\n

Oueslati beat American Steven Lopez to make the podium, while Azerbaijan’s Milad Beigi Harchegani, who Muhammad had defeated in his semi-final, took the other bronze with victory over Poland’s Piotr Pazinski.<\/p>\n

\"Cisse's<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Great Britain’s Lutalo Muhammad suffered an agonising last-second defeat in the men’s -80kg taekwondo final – losing 8-6 to Cheick Sallah Cisse of the Ivory Coast. } World number four Muhammad, 25, led 6-4 but was hit by a reverse turning kick with the last action of the final. GB were aiming for their second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27889"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27889"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}