Indian wrestlers bag 5 medals
Xi'an (China): Indian wrestlers reaped a rich-harvest of five medals in men's freestyle events but a gold medal eluded them on the second day of the Asian Championships here on Wednesday.
All the five wrestlers who competed on Wednesday won a medal each but none could add a gold on the second day after Bajrang Punia clinched a yellow metal in 65kg men's freestyle on Tuesday.
Amit Dhankar and Vicky lost their respective gold medal bouts in the 74kg and 92kg respectively. Rahul Aware (61kg), Deepak Punia (86kg) and Sumit (125kg) swelled the Indian medal tally with a bronze each.
With the two silver and three bronze medals on Wednesday, India's medal tally went up to one gold, three silver and four bronze.
Bajrang Punia (65kg) had won a gold on Tuesday while Parveen Rana (79kg) and Satywart Kadian (97kg) had clinched a silver and a bronze respectively. Dhankar, who won a gold in 66kg in the 2013 edition, lost to Daniyar Kaisanov of Kazakhstan 0-5 in the final. "It is a little disappointing to not have got the gold for India once again. This loss will motivate me to strive further and give my very best for the upcoming tournaments and try to secure the Olympic berth at the World Championships later this year," said Dhankar after his bout.
The 28-year-old Haryana wrestler began with a narrow 2-1 win in qualification round against Mohammad Ashghar Nokhodilarimi of Iran and then hardly broke a sweat in the quarterfinals as his opponent — Japan's Yuhi Fujinami — was injured.
In the semi-finals, Dhankar outplayed Ilgiz Dzhakypbekov of Kyrgyzstan in a 5-0 victory.
Vicky got a walkover in the quarter-finals as his opponent — Muhammad Inam of Pakistan — did not turn up for the bout. In the semifinals, he had a narrow 3-2 win over Xiao Sun of China. But in the gold medal bout, Alireza Mohammad Karimimachiani of Iran was too good for Vicky and the Indian was completely outplayed in a 0-11 Victory by Technical Superiority verdict.
"I wish I could have changed the score but my opponent was unfortunately too good. I hope to put in hard yards at training and make India proud in the next few tournaments coming up," said Vicky on his silver medal.
Aware, who won a 57kg gold at the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, produced a dominant display to beat Jincheol Kim of Korea 9-2 in the men's 61kg freestyle bronze medal play-off.
After beating Jahongirmirza Turobov of Uzbekistan by technical superiority (10-0) in the qualification round, the 27-year-old Indian lost to Behnam Eshagh Ehsanpoor of Iran in the quarter-finals in a Victory by Fall verdict.
