Jitender Kumar sealed his place in the Indian team for the Olympic Qualifiers by reaching the 74kg final at the Asian Championships even as a sluggish Deepak Punia and overconfident Rahul Aware will fight for bronze after losing their respective semifinals, here on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After winning his Qualification bout rather easily, Jitender just about managed to win his following bouts against Iran’s Mostafa Mohabbali Hosseinkhani and Mongolia’s Sumiyabazar Zandanbud .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, his performance was enough to convince the national federation that he should travel to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for the Olympic Qualifiers and a re-trial in this category was not required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It means that two-time Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar, who also competes in 74kg, will have to wait and see how Jitender fares in Bishkek where the finalists will qualify for the Tokyo Games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Jitender reaches the gold medal bout there, it will shut the door on the two-time Olympic medallist Sushil, who has been struggling since the 2018 Asian Games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jitender’s attack from distance were not good enough to get a good grip on his rivals. Largely, he was defending from standing position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Much to the disappointment of home fans, world championship silver medallist Deepak lost his 86kg semifinal to Japan’s Shutaro Yamada as he hardly attacked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Usually Deepak fights till end but today he looked a pale shadow of himself. It is his first event since giving a walkover to Iranian great Hasan Yazdani in the World Championship final due to an ankle injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His movement was terrific and his attacks good but untimely challenges resulted in him losing points in both the quarterfinal and semifinal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a fast-paced and high-scoring quarterfinal bout against Uzbekistan’s Jahongirmirza Turobov, Rahul won 11-9, largely because of his superior defence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was trailing 0-2 early in the second period when he challenged a call only to lose it with a point. It was on his insistence that coach Jagmander Singh challenged the call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soon he reduced the margin with a takedown, making it 2-3. With just 36 seconds left, he went on offensive but it was his rival who took two points with a throw, sealing Aware’s fate.He will fight for bronze against Iran’s Majid Almas Dastan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jitender Kumar sealed his place in the Indian team for the Olympic Qualifiers by reaching the 74kg final at the Asian Championships even as a sluggish Deepak Punia and overconfident Rahul Aware will fight for bronze after losing their respective semifinals, here on Sunday. After winning his Qualification bout rather easily, Jitender just about managed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80628,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80626\/revisions\/80628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}