Gold eludes Indian wrestlers, get 4 silvers, 1 bronze

Glasgow, July 31 :

After a day of highs, there was disappointment in store for Indian wrestlers as they only garnered four silver medals and a bronze in the 2014 Commonwealth Games at the SECC Hall here Wednesday.

Bajrang, Lalita, Sakshi Malik and Satywart Kadian lost their final bouts to settle for the silver medal while Navjot Kaur clinched the bronze medal after she won the play-off match.

This comes after a stunning show by the Indian wrestlers Tuesday when they won three gold medals and a silver. Two-time Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar, Amit Kumar, and Vinesh Phogat had bagged gold medals and Rajeev Tomar settled for the silver.

India’s tally from wrestling now stand at nine medals – three gold, five silver and a bronze. It have now slipped to the second position after Canada in the wrestling competition. Canada have a total of eight medals – five gold and three bronze.

The first medal of the day came from Lalita, who lost her women’s freestyle 53 kg final to Nigeria’s Odunayo Adekuoroye.

Odunayo completely dominated Lalita and took just 31 seconds to seal the gold medal. The Nigerian managed to pin down the Indian and raced away with the win.

Next up was Bajrang, who went down 1-12 to Canada’s David Tremblay in the men’s freestyle 61 kg final. Tremblay took just 84 seconds to beat Bajrang 12-1 in the first period. The Canadian was declared the winner on account of technical superiority.

Sakshi also had to endure an embarrassing loss to to Nigeria’s Aminat Adeniyi and settle for the silver medal in the women’s freestyle 58 kg final.

Aminat completely dominated Sakshi and took a lead of 10-0 in two minutes 24 seconds when the match had to be stopped on grounds of technical superiority.

Kadian fought well but gave it away in the end to to Canada’s Arjun Gill and got the silver in the men’s freestyle 97 kg final.

Both the wrestlers were tied at 4-4 after the end of the bout but Gill was declared the winner since he had a take down.

Kadian had won his Round of 16 and quarter-final comprehensively and then went on to defeat England’s Leon Rattigan 8-4 in the semi-final.

Navjot won the bronze medal beating Scotland’s Sarah Jones in the bronze medal play-off in the women’s freestyle event.

Navjot, 24, won 13-0 against the 31-year-old Sarah. Navjot was leading 9-0 when she pinned down Sarah in her last move to clinch four points and bagged the match on account of technical superiority.

With only four contestants in the women’s freestyle 69 kg event, Navjot started directly in the semis but lost 0-10 to Dori Yeats of Canada.

Earlier, Bajrang too had easy outings in his first two bouts and then defeated Nigeria’s Amas Daniel 5-2 in the last four clash of the men’s freestyle 61 kg category.

Among the women, Sakshi and Lalita started directly in the quarter-finals with both coming out on top.

In the freestyle 53 kg semi-final, Lalita thrashed local girl Shannon Hawke 4-0 while Sakshi defeated Braxton Stone 8-5 in the freesytle 58 kg last four clash.

(IANS)