Harpal Singh Bedi / New Delhi
Pooja Gehlot (53kg) bagged India’s second silver medal while three-time World Junior Championships medallist Sajan Bhanwal (77kg) lost a close semi-final bout in Greco Roman event at the U-23 World Wrestling Championships in Budapest, Hungary on Friday
Both lost their respective bouts to the Japanese rivals. Pooja went down 0-2 to Japan’s 2017 world champion Haruna Okuno. While Sajan Bhanwal (77kg) lost a close semi-final bout 4-5 to Kodai Sakuraba. He will now fight for the bronze on Saturday.
Bhanwal had earlier blanked Jesse Alexander Porter 6-0 in the qualifiers to move into the pre-quarter-finals, where he notched up a 3-1 win over Azerbaijan’s Tunjay Vazirzade. .One of the best Greco-Roman talents to have emerged from India, he then rushed into the semi-finals on the back of a strong 6-2 win over Per Albin Olofsson of Sweden.
However other Indians in Greco-Roman events flopped . Arjun Halakurki entered repechage even after his good run in 55kg came to an end in the quarter-finals when he narrowly went down 12-14 to Emin Narimanovitch Sefershaev of Russia. But with the Russian making it to the summit showdown, Halakurki got another chance.
Earlier he had beaten Giovanni Freni of Italy 13-9 in the qualifiers and Sebastian Kolompar of Serbia 9-0 in the pre-quarter-finals.
Sunil Kumar advanced from the 87kg qualifiers to the pre-quarter-finals by sheer dint of his 7-2 victory over Algeria’s Sid Azara. In the next round, he was shown the door by Ukraine’s Semen Novikov in a 0-8 loss.
In 63kg, Rajeet had it tough against top seed Slavik Galstyan and went down 0-8 in his opening bout. In 130kg, Deepak Poonia could not make much of an impact and succumbed to a 1-6 defeat at the hands of USA’s David Tate Orndorff in the qualification round.