U-23 World Wrestling C’ships: Pooja wins silver, Sajan eyes bronze

Wrestler Pooja Gehlot (53kg) claimed India’s second silver medal after going down to Japan’s 2017 world champion Haruna Okuno in the finals of the UWW Under-23 World Championships.

Gehlot lost 0-2 to Okuno in the summit clash to emulate Ravinder (61kg), who also won a silver earlier this week.

Three-time World Junior Championships medallist Sajan Bhanwal (77kg), however, lost a close semifinal bout 4-5 to Japan’s Kodai Sakuraba. He will now fight for the bronze on Saturday.

A terrific Bhanwal had earlier blanked Jesse Alexander Porter 6-0 in the qualifiers to move into the pre-quarterfinals, where he notched up a 3-1 win over Azerbaijan’s Tunjay Vazirzade.

The unstoppable Bhanwal, one of the best Greco-Roman talents to have emerged from India, then rushed into the semifinals on the back of a strong 6-2 win over Per Albin Olofsson of Sweden.

Among other Greco-Roman results, Arjun Halakurki entered repechage even after his good run in 55kg came to an end in the quarterfinals when he narrowly went down 12-14 to Emin Narimanovitch Sefershaev of Russia.

But with the Russian making it to the summit showdown, Halakurki got another chance.

Earlier he had beaten Giovanni Freni of Italy 13-9 in the qualifiers and Sebastian Kolompar of Serbia 9-0 in the pre-quarterfinals.

Sunil Kumar advanced from the 87kg qualifiers to the pre-quarterfinals after a 7-2 victory over Algeria’s Sid Azara. In the next round, he was shown the door by Ukraine’s Semen Novikov in a 0-8 loss.

In 63kg, Rajeet had it tough against top seed Slavik Galstyan and went down 0-8 in his opening bout.

In 130kg, Deepak Poonia could not make much of an impact and succumbed to a 1-6 defeat at the hands of USA’s David Tate Orndorff in the qualification round.