Indian grapplers bag nine medals at Asian Wrestling C'ship

New Delhi: Indian grapplers finished their campaign at the Asian Wrestling Championship in Bangkok, Thailand with nine medals, including a gold, in the five-day event.

India ended seventh overall in the medal's table with both men's and women's freestyle teams finishing on fourth place, while the Greco-Roman team occupied the sixth position.

In Men's Freestyle category, Sandeep Tomar won the yellow metal in 57kg and Om Prakash Vinod Kumar clinched the silver medal in 70kg.

Indian women accounted for three medals with rising grappler Priyanka Phogat (55kg) winning the silver, while Vinesh Phogat (53kg) and Anita Tomar (63kg) settled for a bronze each.

Interestingly, in Greco-Roman category, which is not India's forte, the wrestlers managed to win four medals. In Men's 57kg Freestyle, Sandeep Tomar got the better of Jong Hak-jin of North Korea in the final bout to give India its lone gold of the tournament that concluded last night.

Vinod Kumar, however, lost his final bout to Adam Batirov of Bahrain to settle for a silver in 70kg. Priyanka Phogat produced a fine show in women's 55kg before going down to Davaasukhiin Otgontsetseg of Mongolia in
the gold-medal bout. The more experienced Vinesh and Anita had to be satisfied with a bronze medal each in their respective categories.

In Greco-Roman, Hardeep Singh claimed a silver medal after losing to Asian Games gold medallist Mahdi Aliyari Feyzabadi of Iran in the 98kg final.

Gaurav Sharma bagged a bronze in 59kg category. He defeated Eun Bin Kim of Korea in the third-place bout.

In 80kg category, Harpreet Singh beat his Uzbek rival Jonibek Otabekov for a bronze, while Naveen got the better of Sun He of China in 130kg for a third-place finish.

In the last edition of the event, which was held in Doha, Qatar, India had won five medals (one silver and four bronze) to finish 10th.