Ulaanbaatar: Star Indian wrestler Ravi Kumar Dahiya grabbed the gold medal while Bajrang Punia and Gourav Baliyan settled for silvers at the Asian Wrestling Championships 2022 in Ulaanbaatar on Saturday.
This is Ravi Kumar Dahiya’s third straight Asian Championships title. Tokyo Olympics silver medallist registered a comprehensive 12-2 technical superiority win against Rakhat Kalzhan of Kazakhstan in the 57kg men’s freestyle final. Dahiya had begun his title defence with a win over Rikuto Arai of Japan and followed it up with a semi-final victory over Mongolia’s Zanabazar Zanadanbud.
Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist Bajrang Punia was undone by junior world champion Rahman Mousa Amouzadkhalili of Iran 1-3 in the men’s 65kg freestyle final. Amouzadkhalili had come through the qualification round to defeat the top-seeded Bajrang Punia.
Later, Gourav Baliyan picked silver in the 79kg, losing to Ali Bakhtiar Savadkouhi of Iran in the final.
Gourav was down 0-8 in the final but produced a terrific comeback to make it 9-9 right at the end of the bout. But a bigger scoring move (four-pointer) from the Iranian meant the Indian grappler had to make do with the silver medal.
This is Gourav Baliyan’s second silver medal at the Asian Championships after finishing runner-up in 2020 as well.
In the men’s 70kg freestyle, Naveen pinned Temuulen Enkhtuya of Mongolia to add another bronze to India’s tally.
Satywart Kadian picked the final medal of the day for India, winning the 97kg men’s freestyle bronze.
