Freestyle wrestling campaign ends with bajrang winning silver & narsingh fighting hard for bronze
Bajrang registered two remarkable come from behind victories in a day to enter the finals of the 61kg freestyle category at the Dowon Gymnasium on Monday and raised hopes of another gold medal in wrestling. But he met his biggest nemesis Massoud Mahmoud of Iran to whom Bajrang had lost both the previous encounters without putting up a fight. This time, too, the result wasn’t any different apart from the fact that he gave a good fight. Bajrang had to settle for silver.
like the previous two matches, Bajrang was slow to start and was trailing by two points after first period. Having seen him raising his game in the crunch situation earlier in the day, the hopes of the gold medal were still afloat.
During the break, he had a good discussion with the coaches. When the two wrestlers returned for the second period, Bajrang quickly earned two points to equalise the score and looked set for another comeback. However, Massoud, this year’s world champion in 61kg, quickly regained the lead.
Then another round of equalizing and regaining the lead followed to make it thrilling round of wrestling perfectly suitable for the final. But the time was running too fast for Bajrang and before he could pin down his opponent once again, the referee blew the whistle and separated the wrestlers. Referees gave the match to the Iranian on technical superiority.
“It was a tough match. I have lost to him twice before but those were one sided bouts. I lost by 0-6 and 0-11. But today I am happy to put up a good fight,” Bajrang said after winning the silver.
“Yogeshwar helped a lot in boosting my confidence. He kept telling me to concentrate on my moves and forget about the previous bouts,” he added.
Earlier, Narsingh Pancham Yadav, who has been selected in the absence of two-time Olympic medalist Sushil Kumar in 74kg freestyle category, got the better of Daisuke Shimada of Japan 3-1 in a hard-fought contest.
Although Narsingh earned the first point, soon the Japanese took two-point lead. The Indian grappler kept coming back from behind throughout the fight. Down 5-7, he came from behind to first level the scores and then earn two more points to have the last laugh.
On way to the final, Bajrang had beaten Tumenbileg Tuvshintulga of Mongolia 3-1 in the Round of 16 before beating 4-1 over Tajikistan's Farkhodi Usmonzoda 4-1 by technical superiority in the quarters.
The semifinal bout against Japan’s Noriyuki Takatsuka was the toughest one. There was little to separate between the two other than the fact that the Japanese was a bit quicker on his feet.
The Japanese managed to pick up the first two points and, at the end of first round, was leading 2-0. Bajrang, however, fought back in the second round and made a strong comeback to level the scores 2-2. He scored the last point in the bout to finally wrap it up 3-1 (classification point) to enter the final.
