Gary Russell Jr injury

US boxer out of the Olympics after being found passed out with dehydration

Gary Russell Jr is out of the Beijing Olympics after being deemed unfit to compete following a frantic rush to make weight.

Russell Jr, found that he was two pounds overweight to compete at the required 119 for Bantamweight and had just hours to drop down. Unfortunately, in attempting to do so, Russell passed out from dehydration following a long and exhaustive run.

Hydration and Dehydration

In sports like wrestling and boxing where athletes need to reach a certain weight, it can create unhealthy training conditions where athletes must take drastic measures to hit their targets.

A quick-fire method of losing weight is to reduce the amount of water in the body, but unfortunately this nearly always leads to dehydration, as was the case with Gary Russell Jr.

Watch Gary Russell Jr sparring ahead of the Beijing Olympics in the video below: