World Wrestling Championships: Indian wrestler Pinki into bronze medal play-off after losing 55kg semi-final bout

Oslo: Indian wrestler Pinki nearly pinned her German rival Nina Hemmer before losing the heart-stopping 55kg semi-final 6-8 to miss out on a historic final at the World Championship, on Monday. In a fast-paced action-packed semi-final, Pinki trailed 0-4 after Hemmer effected a take-down move and followed that up with a quick gut wrench. The 2020 Asian champion Pinki kept looking for her moves and found one from a right leg-attack, pushing the back of the German on the mat for two points. She kept Hemmer in tight grip and held her in that position for more than a minute but the referees were not convinced to give away a ‘fall’ result. After the breather, Pinki levelled the score and then took a 6-4 lead with consecutive take-downs but Hemmer again refused to throw in the towel and pulled off two more two-pointers to emerge winner.

Nina HEMMER 🇩🇪 talks about fighting off her back for the final minute of the first period before reaching the #WrestleOslo 55kg world finals. pic.twitter.com/b8pljPh3SH

— United World Wrestling (@wrestling) October 4, 2021

No Indian woman wrestler has ever played a World Championship final. Geeta Phogat (2012), Babita Phogat (2012), Pooja Dhanda (2018) and Vinesh Phogat (2019) are the only four Indian woman wrestlers to have won bronze medals at the World Championship. In her previous bouts, Pinki was confident in her 5-0 win over Korea’s Kim Soyeon in the qualification round and later pinned Kazakhstan’s Aisha Ualishan to progress to semi-finals. Earlier in the day, Rohit pulled off a smart four-pointer en route to a technical superiority win over Turkey’s Selahattin Kilicsallayan to progress to the men’s freestyle 65kg bronze medal play-off. Rohit took the mat for his repechage round and initially struggled to find an attacking move as he was largely busy defending and was trailing 1-2. However, towards the end of the first period, he employed a double-leg attack and converted that into a pointer to take a 5-2 lead. His style changed dramatically in the second period as he made move after move to take a winning lead. He will face Mongolia’s Tulga Tumur Ochir in the bronze play-off in the evening session. However, Satyawart Kadian (97kg) and Sushil (70kg) lost their qualification rounds to Korea’s Minwon Seo and Georgia’s Zurabi Iakobishvili respectively. Kadian scored all of his six points by pushing his opponent out while Seo also had six points but the Korean was declared winner on the criteria of having scored a bigger point move. He had two 2-pointers. The only point Sushil scored in his 1-5 defeat was on the passivity of stronger-looking Iakabishvili, who gradually took control of the bout with his agility and strength. In the women’s 62kg category, Sangeeta Phogat made a confident start by beating Germany’s Luisa Niemesch 5-2, but lost her pre-quarterfinal 4-6 to Brazil’s Lais Nunes De Oliveira. Sangeeta, who is making a comeback to competitive wrestling after three years following knee issues, effected some splendid double leg attacks in both her bouts but lost points on counter attacks and also ran out of steam against the Brazilian.