Road to Rio: Indian Greco-Roman wrestlers fail to bag Olympic berths

Istanbul: It was a disappointing day for India’s Greco-Roman wrestlers at the second World Olympic Qualifying tournament on Friday as Gurpreet Singh was disqualified for being overweight while his other team-mates failed to grab a berth for the Rio Games in their respective weight categories here. The ongoing tournament is the last qualifying event for the Olympics and only the top two finishers in each weight category here are assured of quota places at Rio Games. [caption id=“attachment_2769288” align=“alignleft” width=“379”] World Olympic Qualifying in Istanbul. Image courtesy: Facebook/United World Wrestling[/caption] While Gurpreet weighed 500 gms more than what was stipulated to be eligible for the Greco-Roman 75kg category competition and was subsequently disqualified, the others in the fray lost their respective bouts at the early stages of the competition. Ravinder Khatri lost 6-10 to Laimutis Adomaitis of Lithuania in 85kg and Naveen went down to Metodiev Miloslav Yuriev of Bulgaria 0-9 in 1/8 round bout of 130kg. The campaign of both Ravinder Singh (59kg) and Suresh Yadav (66kg) was over in the qualification round itself. Ravinder was thrashed by Revaz Lashkhi of Georgia 0-8 and Suresh suffered a 0-3 defeat at the hands of Artak Margaryan of France.