Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
New Delhi, Bajrang Punia won India its first gold medal as he posted a come-from-behind victory over Seungchul Lee of South Korea in the men’s 65kg freestyle on the penultimate day of the Asian Wrestling Championship.
Sarita Mor, meanwhile, bagged a silver medal in the women’s 58kg category.
After registering a 6-2 win, Punia celebrated by taking a victory lap with the tri-colour on his shoulders.
In his gold medal bout, the 23-year-old conceded two points in the opening half to lag behind at the break. However, Punia made a strong comeback in the second half. He first pushed his opponent out of the mat to take one point and then took the Korean down for two more to lead 3-2.
Punia subsequently added three more points to wrap up the bout in style. London Olympics medallist wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt was present at the gallery to witness his prodigy win the gold medal.
“I asked him (Bajrang) to attack all the time and not be defensive and that paid dividends. Winning a gold medal in the Asian Championship is really a big thing,” Dutt said. Punia earlier made the final of his weight division with a hard-fought 3-2 victory over North Korea’s Kukgwang Kim in the semifinal round.
On his way to the gold medal round, Punia got the better of last edition’s Asian Championship gold-medallist Meisam Nassiri of Iran 7-5 in the quarterfinal after beating Uzbek wrestler Sirojiddin Hasanov 4-3 in the qualification round.
However, gold eluded the Indian women wrestlers even as the hosts gave their best ever performance at the Asian Championship with six medals, including four silver and two bronze.
In the 2003 edition, India had won five medals including two silver and three bronze medals.
Sarita blanked
Sarita lost 0-6 to Aisuluu Tynybekova of Kyrgyzstan in the final of the women’s 58kg to settle for the silver medal. Having climbed down from 60kg to 58kg categegory to accommodate Sakshi Malik, Sarita came up with a fine performance before going down tamely in her gold medal bout. “I want to continue the good show and prepare to qualify for the World Championship in August,” said Sarita.
She failed to put up a fight and was completely outplayed by the Kyrgyzstan wrestler. Sarita was lagging behind from the very beginning as her rival clinched two points twice in the first half by taking her down to lead 4-0 at the break. In the second half, the Kyrgyzstan wrestler earned two more points to seal the match in her favour.
Sarita’s journey to the final was a cakewalk as she thrashed Uzbekistan’s Asem Seydametova 10-0 in the quarters before defeating Thi Huong Dao of Vietnam 12-0 to make the gold medal bout.
In the men’s 97kg category, Satywart Kadian went down in his repechage bout to lose out on a place in the bronze medal playoff. He lost to Batzul Ulziisaikhan of Mongolia 5-8 in a closely-fought contest. In the qualification round, Satywart lost to Magomed Ibragimov, but since the Uzbek grappler made it to the gold medal round, the Indian got a chance to fight in the repechage round.
Meanwhile, Olympian Sandeep Tomar suffered a knee injury to bow out early in the men’s 57kg. Tomar sustained the injury that resulted in him losing 5-6 to Ulukbek Zholdoshbekov of Kyrgyzstan. In the men’s 74kg, Jitender crashed out after losing to Tsubasa Asai of Japan in the quarterfinal round 7-8.
