Asian Wrestling Championships: Gurpreet Singh, Sunil Kumar bring home silvers in Greco-Roman; Prem loses bronze playoff

India’s Gurpreet Singh and Sunil Kumar claimed a silver medal each in their respective Greco-Roman categories at the Asian Wrestling Championships on Saturday. On the penultimate day of the competition, India finished with just two silvers in the Greco-Roman wrestling even as Prem missed out on a bronze medal finish. [caption id=“attachment_6529961” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Sunil Kumar (left) and Gurpreet Singh (Right) won silver medals in the Greco-Roman discipline. Image courtesy: WFI[/caption] Gurpreet had to be satisfied with a second spot after being handed a 0-8 defeat by Hyeonwoo Kim of Korea in the final of 77kg category. However on his way to the final, Gurpreet put up an impressive show, thrashing Bakhit Sharif K Badr of Qatar 10-0 in the quarter-finals before eking out a narrow 6-5 victory over Tamerlan Shadukayev of Kazakhstan in the last four round. In 87kg, Sunil Kumar stormed into the final after prevailing over Azamat Kustubayev of Kazakhstan 6-6 in his semi-final bout, while he had earlier beaten Tokhirdzhon Okhonov of Tajikistan 14-7 in the last eight stage. But just like Gurpreet, Sunil too failed to clinch the top spot as he went down to Hossein Ahmad Nouri of Iran in the title clash. Prem, who was another Indian wrestler in contention for a medal after he made the bronze medal playoff in the 130kg class despite going down to Muminjon Abdullaev of Uzbekistan in the quarter-finals, could not finish on the podium. Prem had made it to the play-offs after Abdullaev reached the gold medal round. Prem lost to Kazakhstan’s Damir Kuzembayev in the third-fourth place fight. Earlier in the day, India’s campaign got over in the 55kg and 63kg weight divisions when Manjeet and Vikram Krushnath Kurade lost their respective quarter-final bouts to bow out of the tournament.