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Wrestler Bajrang misses out on bronze medal at World Championship
Rising Indian wrestler Bajrang narrowly missed out on a third-place finish, going down in the bronze medal play-off round in the men's 61kg freestyle category even as other Indians continued to disappoint at the World Championship in Las Vegas.
Rising Indian wrestler Bajrang narrowly missed out on a third-place finish, going down in the bronze medal play-off round in the men's 61kg freestyle category even as other Indians continued to disappoint at the World Championship in Las Vegas.
Besides Bajrang, two other Indians - Naresh Kumar (86kg) and Mausam Khatri (97kg) - failed to make it to the medal round in the men's division. 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 the 1/16 round.
In the women's 60kg division, Sarita lost to Barka Emese of Hungary 2-4 in the qualifying round.
