Zagreb: Greco-Roman wrestler Ashu won a bronze medal in the men’s 67kg at the Zagreb Open 2023 Ranking Series, beating Lithuania’s Adomas Grigaliunas 5-0 in the bronze play-off.
Ashu suffered 0-9 loss at the hands of eventual finalist Reza Mahdi Abbasi of Iran in the qualification round to enter the repechage on late Saturday night.
The Indian grappler then registered a dominating 8-0 win over Hungary’s Adam Phoilec before getting the better of Norway’s Haavard Joergensen 9-0 to make the bronze medal bout.
Ashu’s bronze medal win on Saturday was India’s second medal in the ongoing ranking series. Earlier, Under-23 world champion freestyle wrestler Aman Sehrawat won a bronze in the men’s 57kg.
In another Greco-roman bout, Sagar, competing in the 63kg bracket, lost his quarterfinal bout on point 0-6 against Iran’s Aref Hossein Khoun Mohammadi. The Indian got a revival after Mohammadi reached the final. But he couldn’t capitalise the opportunity as the Indian lost 1-7 in the repechage round to Austria’s Aker Schmid Al Obaidi.
Earlier in the day, Asian championships bronze medallist Sushma Shokeen lost to Canadian grappler Samantha Stewart via fall to crash out in the quarterfinals of the women’s 53kg.
Sushma had defeated Tetiana Profatilova of France and China’s Yuhong Zhong in the earlier rounds.
Reetika, competing in the women’s 72kg which was held in the round-robin format, could not make it to the semifinals. Kiran (women’s 76kg) too failed to advance further.
–IANS
Comments are closed.