Junior worlds gold medallist Deepak Punia bagged an Olympic berth by reaching the semifinals of the World Wrestling Championships in the men's freestyle 86kg category. The 20-year old beat Carlos Izquierdo of Colombia 7-6 in the quarterfinals on Saturday at Nur-Sultan, Kazhakstan on Saturday.
Commonwealth Games gold medallist Rahul Aware, contesting in a non-Olympic 61kg category, entered the semifinals with a 10-7 win over Kazakhstan's Rassul Kaliyev.
In a closely-contested quarterfinal match, Aware trailed 0-2 in the first minute, but equalised 2-2 and then took a 3-2 lead. Aware was able to take slender 6-5 lead in the second period and extended it to 10-6 in the closing stages when he wrestled Kaliyev off the mat in the final minute.
The Kazakh wrestler won one more point through a challenge in the dying seconds, but Aware sealed a 10-7 victory to sail into the semis. Earlier, in the day the 27-year old outclassed Turkmenistan's Kerim Hojakov 13-2 in the pre-quarterfinal.
- Punia's comeback -
In the second round, Punia staged a remarkable comeback to recover from a 0-5 deficit to win 8-6 against Kazhakstan's Adilet Davlumbayev.
Punia was wrestled out of the mat by Davlumbayev in the first minute as he trailed 0-4. However, the Indian showed great resilience to cut down his opponent's lead to 5-3 in the first period and levelled the scores in the second period.
Both the players were tied on 7-7 when the Kazakh wrestler requested for a challenge. The referees awarded one more point to Punia's existing seven points and docked the local a point. Deepak saw out the remaining 8 seconds and sealed a 8-6 win.
In the men's 79kg category, Jitender lost the quarterfinal 0-4 to Slovakia's Tajmuraz Salkazanov while Mausam Khatri lost 0-10 to USA's Olympic gold medallist Kyle Snyder in a lopsided pre-quarterfinal in the 97kg category.
However, both Jitender and Khatri have a chance of making it to the repechage, given their opponents reach the finals.
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