Anthony Joshua revealed how some advice from former world champion Lennox Lewis helped him storm into the Olympic super-heavyweight final at ExCeL on Friday and guarantee Great Britain's boxing team their most successful Games for over a century.
Not since 1908 have four British boxers gone through to gold medal matches but Joshua followed the earlier lead of Fred Evans and Luke Campbell - and Thursday's historic triumph by Nicola Adams - to dispatch giant Kazakh Ivan Dychko 13-11.
Joshua said: "I saw Lennox when he came to watch Nicola and he told me to back up with the jab. He started throwing jabs and shadow-boxing, which was great. He gave me some advice and I took it with me into this fight."
Lewis' hint proved a golden one as it was Joshua's lightning left hand which made all the difference over three cagey rounds, with the pair locked together through two before the Londoner's cleaner work in the last saw him home.
Meanwhile lightweight Vasyl Lomachenko and his two Ukrainian teammates advanced to gold-medal bouts with victories in the semi-finals also on Friday night.
Ukraine light welterweight Denys Berinchyk and Mongolia's Munkh-Erdene Uranchimeg put on perhaps the best fight of the tournament, with the relentless Berinchyk rallying from a second-round deficit to score a jaw-dropping 17 points in the third round of a 29-21 victory. Berinchyk will face Cuba's Roniel Iglesias in the final.
Ukraine heavyweight Oleksandr Usyk dominated Bulgaria's Tervel Pulev to earn a gold-medal bout with Italy's Clemente Russo, who beat top-seeded Teymur Mammadov of Azerbaijan in yet another hold-filled bout for two boxers whose styles don't please many fight crowds.
Ukraine's powerful team placed a tournament-high five boxers in the semi-finals.
NZN