India’s Gurpreet Singh and Sunil Kumar settled for a silver medal each in their respective Greco-Roman categories at the Asian Wrestling Championships here on Saturday.
On the penultimate day of the competition, India’s Greco-Roman wrestlers have already done better than the last edition, where they had won a couple of bronze medals through Rajender Kumar (55kg) and Harpreet Singh (82kg). While Gurpreet and Sunil finished on second position, Prem missed out on a bronze medal on the fifth day of the tournament.
Gurpreet had to be satisfied with a silver after being handed a 0-8 defeat by Hyeonwoo Kim of Korea in the final of 77kg category. The 2012 Olympic gold medallist and 2013 World Championships champion, Kim also has four Asian Championships gold medals to his credit.
Gurpreet put up an impressive show on his way to the final, thrashing Bakhit Sharif K Badr of Qatar 10-0 in the quarterfinals before eking out a narrow 6-5 victory over Tamerlan Shadukayev of Kazakhstan in the last four round.
In 87kg, Sunil Kumar stormed into the final after prevailing over Azamat Kustubayev of Kazakhstan 6-6 in a victory by fall verdict in his semifinal bout, while he had earlier beaten Tokhirdzhon Okhonov of Tajikistan 14-7 in the last eight stage.
But just like Gurpreet, Sunil too failed to clinch the top spot as he went down in the title clash to Iran’s Hossein Ahmad Nouri, the reigning Asian Games gold medallist, who also has three yellow metals from the Asian Championships.
“I wish I were a little bit more aggressive. That could have changed the colour of the medal. I will strive to train harder and do better in the upcoming tournaments.
“I had a chance of training in Kazakhstan and training with foreign partners helped me improved my standard,” said Sunil after the final. Prem, who was another Indian wrestler in contention for a medal after he made it to the bronze-medal play-off in the 130kg class despite going down to Muminjon Abdullaev of Uzbekistan in the quarterfinals, could not finish on the podium.
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