Bajrang misses out on bronze medal finish at Worlds

Rising India wrestler Bajrang narrowly missed out on a third-place finish, going down in the bronze medal play-off round in men’s 61kg Freestyle category even as other Indians continued to disappoint at the World Championship here.

Besides Bajrang two other Indian men — Naresh Kumar (86kg) and Mausam Khatri (97kg) — failed to make it to the medal round. While Sarita wrapped off the female wrestling competition on a dismal note, losing in the qualification round itself.

Arjuna Awardee Bajrang did not have an ideal start as he was beaten by the eventual silver medallist Batbold Nomin of Mongolia 0-10 in the qualification round.

But since his Mongolian rival reached the final, Bajrang made it to repechage round, where he won both his bouts to advance to the bronze medal play-off.

In his two repechage bouts, he first defeated local grappler Reece Weslee Humphrey 6-0 before getting the better of Beka Lomtadze of Georgia 13-6.

But in the bronze medal play-off the Indian fell to Vasyl Shuptar of Ukraine to lose out on a podium finish.

Khatri also got an opportunity to fight in the repechage round despite going down to eventual finalist Abdusalam Gadisov of Russia 0-10 in the Round of 1/16.

In his repechage bout however, Khatri was defeated by Stefan Kehrer of Germany 5-6.

Naresh, meanwhile, could not cross the first hurdle as he was outplayed 0-10 by Marco Lukas Riesen of Switzerland in 1/16 round.

In women’s 60kg division, Sarita lost to Barka Emese of Hungary 2-4 in the qualifying round.