Wrestling World Championships: Three Indian Greco Roman wrestlers suffer defeat in early rounds

Budapest: India’s Greco Roman wrestlers continued to struggle at the World Championship with only Manish managing to clear qualification round on Friday. [caption id=“attachment_4431271” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] Manish, competing in the 67kg, is the only Indian Greco Roman grappler to have won a bout thus far. He won his qualification bout 3-1 against Aleksandrs of Latvia before losing the 1/16 round 0-9 to Japan’s Tsuchika Shimoyamada. Both Gyanender (60kg) and Manjeet (87kg) could not clear the qualification round, losing by technical superiority. While Gyanender was knocked out by Lithuania’s Justas Petravicius, Manjeet lost to Estonia’s Eerik Aps. Whether these three get a repechage round will be determined after the evening session. On the opening day also, none of the four Greco Roman wrestlers could win a match. Vijay (55kg), Gaurav Shar (63kg), Kuldeep Malik (72kg) and Harpreet Singh (82kg) had all crashed out after losing their qualification rounds. Sandeep Tulsi Yadav remained the lone Greco Roman wrestler from India to win a medal at the Worlds. He had won a bronze in the 2013 edition. India have won two medals so far in the ongoing Championship with Bajrang Punia winning a silver in men’s freestyle 65kg event and Pooja Dhanda grabbing a bronze in the women’s 57kg category.